Rights Claims in Anti-abortion Campaigns in Poland and Sweden

Abstract

This chapter presents two case analyses, one situated in Sweden and the other in Poland, where attempts have been made to intervene in the existing laws regulating access to abortion. The first case involves the lawsuits filed by midwives in Sweden who claimed to have been discriminated against on the grounds of their religion when they had been turned down for work due to their objection to performing abortion as part of the job description. The second is that of a Polish civic legislative initiative aimed at restricting the prevailing abortion legislation in Poland in cases of foetal anomalies. We explore the rights claims deployed in these anti-abortion campaigns with an aim to contribute to the growing feminist scholarship on rhetorical devices and mobilisation tactics employed in the struggles over access to abortion. The two cases illustrate how anti-abortion mobilisations have been using rights claims that traditionally had been employed by feminist movements fighting for access to abortion. While it can be observed that this trend is part of a broader development of what has been described as a transnational anti-gender movement’s appeal to the law, our analyses illustrate different and context-sensitive ways in which rights claims are articulated.