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Politics of Morality

The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland

Joanna Mishtal

“One of Mishtal’s most important contributions is her analysis of the gendering of biopolitics in Poland and the ways the Catholic Church has undertaken a politics of morality based on individual surveillance and political intimidation. Methodologically sophisticated, innovative, and refreshingly free of jargon, this is an important work.”—Michele Rivkin-Fish, author of Women’s Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics of Intervention

“Mishtal’s book is a compelling and horrifying account of how Polish institutions intervened and gained command over women’s lives, and how women have been losing control over who will have access to their bodies and the circumstances that warrant that access. A must-read for all who are interested in one of the most contested aspects of transformational politics in Poland—reproductive rights.”—Joanna Regulska, coeditor of Women and Gender in Postwar Europe: From Cold War to European Union

After the fall of the state socialist regime and the end of martial law in 1989, Polish society experienced both a sense of relief from the tyranny of Soviet control and an expectation that democracy would bring freedom. After this initial wave of enthusiasm, however, political forces that had lain concealed during the state socialist era began to emerge and establish new religious-nationalist orthodoxy. While Solidarity garnered most of the credit for democratization in Poland, it had worked quietly with the Catholic Church, to which a large majority of Poles at least nominally adhered. As the church emerged as a political force in the Polish Sejm and Senate, it precipitated a rapid erosion of women’s reproductive rights, especially the right to abortion, which had been relatively well established under the former regime.

The Politics of Morality is an anthropological study of this expansion of power by the religious right and its effects on individual rights and social mores. It explores the contradictions of postsocialist democratization in Poland: an emerging democracy on one hand, and a declining tolerance for reproductive rights, women’s rights, and political and religious pluralism on the other. Yet, as this thoroughly researched study shows, women resist these strictures by pursuing abortion illegally, defying religious prohibitions on contraception, and organizing into advocacy groups. As struggles around reproductive rights continue in Poland, these resistances and unofficial practices reveal the sharp limits of religious form of governance.

Joanna Mishtal is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Central Florida. Her research examines the politics of gender, focusing on reproductive rights, health, and social policies in Poland, her native country.

Ohio University Press

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