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Biopolitics, Gendered Nationalism, and Abortion: The Influence of the Catholic Church in Poland and Ireland

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Poland and Ireland each have some of the world's most restrictive abortion legislation, with abortion being nearly if not entirely criminalized in both countries. The Catholic Church filled a nationalist role, setting the stage for each country to become a modern theocracy.
creator Boggess, Hannah.
Title Biopolitics, Gendered Nationalism, and Abortion: The Influence of the Catholic Church in Poland and Ireland
sponsor French, Brigittine M.
supporting host Grinnell College. Anthropology Department.
supporting host Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Symposium, 2017
Index Date 2017
Publisher Grinnell College
Type of Resource text
Genre research paper
Digital Origin reformated digital
Digital Extent 28 pages
Media Type application/pdf
note Research paper developed for a Mentored Advanced Project in Anthropology with Professor Brigittine French and presented at the 2017 Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Symposium.
description Poland and Ireland each have some of the world's most restrictive abortion legislation, with abortion being nearly if not entirely criminalized in both countries. Their respective histories provided an ideological vacuum in which the Catholic Church filled a nationalist role, setting the stage for each country to become a modern theocracy. Both countries have a strong tendency to equate nationalism with Catholicism, and further, with traditional gender roles; this emphasis on gendered nationalism becomes a mechanism through which the male, Catholic nation-state maintains control over women. The influence of the church-state strips women of their physical, intellectual, and political agency. Restrictive abortion legislation in Ireland and Poland is an embodiment of Catholic influences and biopolitics. The state's management and control of reproduction are inseparable from how women's bodies and lives are managed and controlled. Gendered understandings of the nation are manifested at the site of the female body vis-รก-vis the state's policies, and abortion access therefore becomes explicitly linked to the moral and political boundaries of the nation. I argue that the nationalist, religious rhetoric employed by the unofficial theocracy in both states coupled with a historical legacy of conservative understandings of gender enable Ireland and Poland to implicitly and explicitly deprive women of their fundamental rights; as such, women are subject to processes of regulation, discipline, and control carried out by the Irish and Polish Catholic nation-states. Both states thereby institutionalize policies and ideologies that systematically oppress women and hierarchize fetal life over the lives of women.
Language English
Topic Abortion.
Topic Biopolotocs/
Topic Nationalism.
Topic Women in the Catholic Church.
Topic Reproductive rights.
Geographic Ireland.
Geographic Poland.
Temporal 21st Century
Keyword Gendered nationalism.
Classification HQ
Related Item Digital Grinnell
Related Item Mentored Advanced Project
Related Item Undergraduate Student Symposium
Related Item Student Scholarship
Identifier (local) grinnell:18757
Access Condition Copyright to this work is held by the author(s), in accordance with United States copyright law (USC 17). Readers of this work have certain rights as defined by the law, including but not limited to fair use (17 USC 107 et seq.).
Identifier (hdl) http://hdl.handle.net/11084/18757
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