Miller Center | Transnational Exchanges of the Polish Anti-Abortion Movement | Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska
Miller Center | Transnational Exchanges of the Polish Anti-Abortion Movement | Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska
Benevolent Western Sponsors? Transnational Exchanges of the Polish Anti-Abortion Movement (1970s-1990s)
Prof. Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska, University of Warsaw; Fulbright Scholar, UMD
Women in communist Poland had access to abortion on demand. But in 1993, after the democratic transition, the Polish Parliament passed a near-total abortion ban. The anti-abortion movement played a prominent role in this shift. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the Polish “right to life” movement worked in tandem with “pro-life” organizations from the United States, the hub of a transnational anti-abortion movement. Through their networks, they exchanged “pro-life” materials, activists, and strategies in the last decades of communism and during the Polish transition to democracy. Prof. Kuźma-Markowska probes Polish activists’ agency in relations with their “benevolent Western sponsors,” their adaptation of American ideas, and the tensions they illuminate among U.S. anti-abortion activists.