CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Bianco, Pearl Ewa |
|---|---|
| Title | To Abort or To Be Polish? Civil Liberties, National Belonging, and Democratic Backsliding in PiS-Era Poland |
| Summary | This research examines how Poland's Law and Justice Party (PiS) discursively justified abortion restrictions as part of broader democratic backsliding between 2015-2023. Through systematic discourse analysis of parliamentary debates, election programs, and political statements, I investigate two questions: what role did abortion restrictions play in the erosion of Polish democracy, and how did PiS legitimize the curtailment of reproductive rights as civil liberties? Drawing on theories of liberal democracy, nationalist identification, and existential threat, I demonstrate that PiS transformed reproductive rights from individual civil liberties into national threats requiring state intervention. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) and qualitative analysis, four key discursive strategies are revealed: (1) positioning Catholic morality as essential to authentic Polish belonging, (2) framing abortion as demographic threat to national survival, (3) constructing restrictions as tests of national loyalty, and (4) categorizing pro-choice advocates as foreign enemies undermining Polish sovereignty. These findings contribute to understanding how populist nationalist parties utilize moral issues to justify democratic backsliding, revealing mechanisms through which civil liberties are systematically eroded under the guise of national preservation and cultural authenticity. |
| Supervisor | Milacic, Filip |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/bianco_pearl.pdf |
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