The abortion debate in Poland opinion polls, ideological politics, citizenship, and the erasure of gender as a category of analysis

Living Gender after Communism

Volumn , Issue , 2007, Pages 63-79

  Kramer, Anne Marie ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 73649131867     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (45)

1. Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
2. See Rachel Alsop and Jenny Hockey, "Women's Reproductive Lives as a Symbolic Resource in Central and Eastern Europe", European Journal of Women's Studies 8, no. 4(2001):454-71
3. and Ewa Maleck-Lewy and Myra Marx Ferree, "Talking about Women and Wombs: The Discourse of Abortion and Reproductive Rights in the GDR during and after the Wende", in Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life After Socialism, ed. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 92-117.
4. See Wendy Bracewell, "Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Serbian Nationalism", Nations and Nationalism 6, no. 4(2000):563-90
5. and Lisa Price, "Sexual Violence And Ethnic Cleansing: Attacking the Family", in Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women's Studies, ed. Gabriele Griffin and Rosi Braidotti (London: Zed Press, 2002), 252-66.
6. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender After Socialism (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 15-16.
7. Here I am taking Nick Moon's definition of public opinion polls: "the definition of an opinion poll is more broad than voting intention, and less broad than any topic under the sun [⋯] the opinion in public opinion polls must be about political or social topics [⋯] they must be about matters that are in the general public interest" and "to count as a opinion poll rather than a random collection of anecdotal information, there must be some form of scientific approach." See Nick Moon, Opinion Polls: History, Theory and Practice (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 2-3.
8. For an understanding of how opinion polling functioned under the state socialist regimes in state socialist Europe, see Matt Henn, "Opinion Polling in Central and Eastern Europe under Communism", Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 2(1998):229-40.
9. See Matt Henn, "Polls, Politics and Perestroika: The Emergence of Political Opinion Polling in Central and Eastern Europe", European Business and Economic Development 1, no. 5(1993):11-17
10. and Matt Henn, "Polls and the Political Process: The Use of Opinion Polls by Political Parties and Mass Media Organizations in European Post-communist Societies (1990-1995)", Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 13, no. 3(1997):127-47.
11. Justin Lewis, "The Opinion Poll as Cultural form", International Journal of Cultural Studies 2, no. 2(1999):204.
12. Lisbeth Lipari, "Toward a Discourse Approach to Polling", Discourse Studies 2, no. 2(2000):187-216.
13. From 1956 the provisions of the Abortion Admissibility Law had allowed the termination of pregnancy for medical reasons, in case of rape or incest, or in the case of a woman's "difficult living conditions." These provisions had been interpreted liberally to include abortion on socioeconomic and therapeutic grounds. See Françoise Girard and Wanda Nowicka, "Clear and Compelling Evidence: The Polish Tribunal on Abortion Rights", Reproductive Health Matters 10, no. 19(2002):22-30.
14. Despite the similarity of provisions, there are significant differences between the 1956 Abortion Admissibility Law and the 1996 liberalization amendment. The liberalization amendment specifies a twelve-week time limit for abortions performed for social or legal reasons; there is a mandatory consultation and a waiting period of three days for the woman seeking an abortion; and there are harsher penalties for illegal abortions after twenty-four weeks. All of these provisions marked the 1996 amendment as less liberal than the 1956 law. See Eleonora Zielińska, "Between Ideology, Politics, and Common Sense: The Discourse of Reproductive Rights in Poland", in Reproducing Gender, 23-57.
15. These included the following bulletins: Opinia publiczna o przerywaniu ciaȧy [Public opinion on abortion], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, June 1989);
16. Młodzież o przerywaniu ciaży [Young people on abortion], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, July 1989);
17. Opinia publiczna o przerywaniu ciaży [Public opinion on abortion], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, June 1990);
18. Prawo o aborcji w opinii społeczeństwa [Law on abortion in the opinion of society], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, March 1991);
19. Prawo o aborcji w opinii młezy [Law on abortion in the opinion of young people], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, June 1991);
20. Opinia publiczna o prawie do przerywania ciaży [Public opinion on the abortion law], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, April 1992);
21. Opinia społeczna o przerywaniu ciaży [The opinion of society on abortion], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, November 1992);
22. Społeczne konsekwencje ustawy o warunkach dopuszczalnosci przerywaniu ciȧy [Social consequences of the law on the conditions under which abortion is permitted], CBOS Opinion Bulletin, (Warsaw: CBOS, November 1993);
23. Stosunek do prawnej dopuszczalnosci aborcji i ewentualnej zmiany ustawy [Attitude to the legal permissibility of abortion and eventual changes to the law], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, June 1994).
24. These include the following: Kwestie ideologiczne: prywatyzacja, bezrobocie, aborcja, Konkordat [Ideological questions: Privatization, unemployment, abortion, Concordat], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, January 1996);
25. Zakres tematyczny Referendum [Thematic territory of a Referendum], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, January 1996);
26. Stosunek do prawnej dopuszczalnosci aborcji i ewentualnej zmiany ustawy [Attitude toward regulation permitting abortion and the eventual change of the law], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, April 1996);
27. Stosunek do aborcji wobec liberalizacji przepisów jej dotyczacych [Attitude toward abortion in light of the liberalization of regulations concerning it], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, November 1996);
28. Nowelizacja ustawy antyaborcyjnej i jej konsekwencje [Amendment of the anti-abortion law and its consequences], CBOS Opinion Bulletin (Warsaw: CBOS, November 1996). All of the 1996 bulletins report on public attitudes toward abortion; however, some do so in the context of wider framing issues, such as possible topics for inclusion in a referendum, or the relationship between attitude to abortion and attitude to the Concordat, privatization, and unemployment. The remainder of the bulletins report on attitudes toward abortion in the narrower but perhaps more immediate context of then-current legislative attempts to liberalize abortion policy.
29. For example, one opinion poll states in its introduction that it sets out to chart the dynamic influence of the abortion debate on public opinion: "Similarly to two months ago, we asked respondents about the characteristic of their opinion of the method of legal regulation of abortion. This made it possible to trace how the current ongoing substantial debate around the amendment to the anti-abortion law has affected on public opinion" (CBOS, Nowelizacja ustawy antyaborcyjnej, 2).
30. For a feminist critique of citizenship, see the following: Mary Dietz, "Context Is All: Feminism and Theories of Citizenship", in Feminism and Politics, ed. Anne Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 378-400;
31. Ruth Lister, "Citizenship: Towards a Feminist Synthesis", Feminist Review 57(Autumn 1997):28-48;
32. and Nira Yuval-Davis, "Women, Citizenship and Difference", Feminist Review 57(Autumn 1997):4-27.
33. For an introduction to how these debates have been extended to the process of democratization and economic transformation in East Central Europe, see Barbara Einhorn, "Gender and Citizenship in the Context of Democratization and Economic Transformation in East Central Europe", in International Perspectives on Gender and Democratisation, ed. Shirin M. Rai (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 103-24
34. and Barbara Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender and Women's Movements in East Central Europe (New York: Verso, 1993).
35. For an introduction to feminist epistemology and a discussion of feminist critiques of "malestream" epistemology see Alessandra Tanesini, An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999).
36. CBOS, Stosunek do prawnej dopuszczalności aborcji, 3.
37. The 1996CBOS opinion poll bulletins repeatedly frame abortion attitude in relation to parliamentary politics. One such bulletin measures voter support in the light of the forthcoming liberalization of abortion (CBOS, Stosunek do aborcji).
38. CBOS, Stosunek do prawnej dopuszczalnoéci aborcji, 3.
39. CBOS, Kwestie ideologiczne, 5.
40. CBOS, Stosunek do aborcji, 11.
41. One 1996 poll investigates the degree of public support for "liberal transformation" in the areas of privatization, unemployment, the Concordat, and abortion, further gauging public opinion on the "ideological shape of the state" (CBOS, Kwestie ideologiczne).
42. CBOS, Nowelizacja ustawy antyaborcyjnej, p5.
43. CBOS, Stosunek do aborcji, 8.
44. Tricia Cusack, "Janus and Gender: Women and the Nation's Backward Look", Nations and Nationalism 6, no. 4(2000):544.
45. CBOS, Stosunek do aborcji, 8.