Legal Battles Over Reproductive Rights in the Context of State Authoritarianism

Author: Isabelle Jasmin Schmitt Democratic, liberal states are currently undergoing processes of authoritarianism under the influence of right-wing state projects. Academic debate on this issue has been ongoing since Orbán's successful authoritarian restructuring of Hungary into an “illiberal democracy”. The processes of authoritarianism currently observable globally have two similarities: first, access to the legal sphere, the authoritarian restructuring of legal institutions, and the erosion of the rule of law; second, access to gender relations. Physical self-determination and reproductive rights are among the first points of attack. Beyond the legitimizing and thus stabilizing function of the legal field, following Bourdieu and Gramsci, the law, through its relational autonomy and its own logic, offers a space in which social rights can be fought for even against socially hegemonic forces. My thesis is that the legal field consequently becomes a central arena in which the authoritarian restructuring of states is contested, and legal battles in the field of reproductive rights become those in which decisive courses are set—or resistance is organized. To examine this, I propose the concept of legal battles by Buckel, Pichl and Vestena (2024) and use the example of abortion law in Poland to show how the strategic field of law is the site of struggles over processes of authoritarianism