Gotowanie żaby. Prawicowy konstytucjonalizm a prawa kobiet w Polsce (Boiling Frog. Right-wing constitutionalism and women's rights in Poland)

Abstract

English Abstract: A ruling by the Constitutional Court (hereinafter: the Court) on October 22, 2020, sparked some of the biggest mass protests in Poland since 1989. With this ruling, the Court declared unconstitutional a statutory provision allowing the termination of a pregnancy when "prenatal tests or other medical indications point to a high probability of severe and irreversible fetal impairment or an incurable disease threatening its life." This ruling is not, as some commentators would like to see, an aberration, a departure from previous liberal and human rights-based standards by a group of judges or "understudy judges" affiliated with the Law and Justice party. Rather, it is a consequence of the right-wing constitutionalism that has dominated the Court for years. This constitutionalism is both fundamentalist Catholic and exclusionary legalistic. It accepts religious Catholic doctrine as a legal basis and limiting the influence of civil society and public debates on the Constitution and its values.

Note: Downloadable document is in Polish.

Keywords: abortion rights, constitutionalism, Poland