Koralewska, IngaZielinska, Katarzyna2024-03-082024-03-081369-1058http://hdl.handle.net/1885/315824Poland has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, and anti-abortion discourse shapes the debate and social attitudes towards the issue. The paper aims to reconstruct the way in which this discourse, as exemplified in the Polish right-wing press, constructs negative views about abortion and to identify the legitimation mechanisms it employs to sustain its interpretations. Based on our findings, resulting from a content analysis of articles from two right-wing weekly magazines, we distinguish three interrelated frames organising Polish anti-abortion discourse, centred on ‘defending the unborn’, ‘protecting women’, and ‘preserving culture and nation’. While the first two have occurred in the liberal contexts of Anglophone countries, with one replacing the other, in Polish anti-abortion discourse they co-exist. The construction of abortion as a threat to culture and nation is specific to Poland. We argue that by blending together community-related and individualistic arguments, Polish anti-abortion discourse adapts to wider societal changes observable in the country, thereby sustaining its power to define debate.This study was developed as part of the project“Public Discourse in Poland and Religion.Models of Legitimation in the Debates on Biopolitics between 2004 and 2014”, funded by thePolish National Science Centre (UMO-2014/13/B/HS6/03311).Open access to the article was financed from Jagiellonian University funds under theExcellence Initiative–Research University programme (Priority Research Area Heritage)application/pdfen-AU© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Grouphttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/AbortiondiscoursePolandright-wing press'Defending the unborn', 'protecting women' and 'preserving culture and nation': anti-abortion discourse in the Polish right-wing press202110.1080/13691058.2021.18785592022-10-16Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License