If a widely understood Christian-national camp, which understands the importance not only of the independency of the state, but besides of its civilisational and moral sovereignty, wants to effectively regulation after taking power in the forthcoming parliamentary elections, it must reject the myths of the liberal revolution, which block in Poland truly crucial changes.
The people of Law and Justice for many years of their regulation constantly stumbled over the skillful communicative traps set by opposition, whose effectiveness, to a large extent, was the consequence of media literacy of "democrats" who could both political class and social opinion bring up their own dogmas.
One specified myth-dogmas is the communicative about the existence of alleged pendulum rules in politics. It is constantly returning as part of the debate on the legal protection of the life of unborn people. This story tells us more or little that measures aimed at excluding the availability of abortion from state law will origin political sentiments and, as a result, a social reaction. This would allegedly lead to a fast extension of the availability of abortion, even in its utmost form, or "on request". Of course, this story is accompanied by credible stories to confirm his truthfulness. But do they truly prove anything? It's worth a look.
False analogy
The story of pendulum is based on a false analogy passed between the planet of physical mechanics and social and political reality. The palpability of the pendulum, specified as in the cuckoo clock, presented as stories about the principles of politics, allowed liberals and the left to easy instill in the minds of the public the belief that it is more than a rhetorical argument designed to preserve revolutionary order and defend it from change and even full rejection. In fact, the communicative of the political pendulum tells us nothing or nothing about the "physics" of politics, but it is intended to frighten and thus paralyze the will of people who personally identify with the Catholic opinion about life or keep reserve against the liberal revolution, but they deficiency political determination.
I will not come back to the subject of the liberal revolution in Poland. I wrote about it in respective erstwhile articles in which I analysed the situation in our country after the parliamentary elections in 2023, after Karol Nawrocki had won this year's presidential election, as well as erstwhile I discussed the concept announced by Donald Tusk of "a fighting democracy". However, it is worth to halt for a minute with a “fighting democracy”. After all, it is nothing more than a force test – with the usage of the apparatus of power and coercion – to halt the democratic changes that took place in Poland from 2015-2023 and to preserve the model of the state which was orchestrated during the 1989 Revolution. It would be appropriate to even say that the Tusk government not only preserves the outcast post-communist revolution that the society rejected 10 years ago, but, contrary to everything, tries to push it further, ignoring the affirmative achievements of the last decade. This is not what is most crucial here. The concept of a "fighting democracy" is an excellent example of the fact that liberals themselves do not believe in any political pendulum, but in their own actions, which go hand in hand with the control of the state apparatus. They besides believe in the efficiency of these tools in the process of formatting the state according to the patterns of their own ideology.
However, 1 might say that, together with the judgement of the Constitutional Court of October 2020 and the designation of eugenic abortion as contrary to the basic law of the Republic, imposibilism in the camp of Law and Justice has been overcome. Much could be said about whether this actually happened, but in short the full substance should be put in words – this imposibilism has not been overcome. Moreover, to any degree it was even reinforced, due to the fact that liberals, including those who operate inside the Jarosław Kaczyński party, managed to convince its leaders that the election of 2023 had been lost due to the effective conduct by the Constitutional Court of protecting the lives of unborn sick children.
Pendulum and compromise
By 2020, the main argument for the existence of a political pendulum was fundamentally hypothetical. And yet, thanks to his long-standing propaganda work, he was able to fix it sufficiently to become 1 of the political dogmas of the 3rd Republic. But how was it constructed? Liberals and the Left preached and further proclaimed the existence in Poland of another mythological phenomenon known as "abortion compromise". According to him, the 1993 Law on the Protection of Life, which at the same time laid down 3 exceptions in which specified protection could be waived, was the consequence of any kind of agreement between the political forces at the time in Parliament. This, however, is completely untrue.
As the editor-in-chief of “Christianitas” Paweł Milcarek wrote almost a decade ago: “There was no political compromise on the scope of the protection of unborn life. In 1993, 1 group of politicians managed to bring about a bill on the protection of conceived life – much worse than a complex project, but besides much better than the current legal state described by the 1956 Act. The main in plus difference was the abolition of the admissibility of abortion “for social reasons”, the category most commonly used”.
The story of the abortion compromise did not appear in public debate accidentally, as well as like the story of pendulum. Both, in support of each other, were designed to consolidate the legal position regarding the protection of unborn life. Although the 1993 Act was a symbol of the failure of pro-abortion environments in Poland, the social sentiments and possible contained in the Constitution of the Republic for closer legal protection of life were not the worst possible failure – abortion could inactive be performed. It is besides not a coincidence that both myths began to make a peculiar career and even gained their present form, after the 1997 Constitutional Court ruling, erstwhile an effort to introduce abortion on request was stopped. Of course, under the cloak of the 4th exception in the form of abortion for social reasons. The decision of the Constitutional Tribunal was a sign that the effort to decision the pendulum to the left, against the legal entity that was established in the Act, would be blocked by the Constitution.
Myth and Reality
Particular attention should be paid to these 4 years between 1993 and 1997. As I have already mentioned, although it is in events related to this first date that the founding minute for the story of the abortion compromise and the story of the political pendulum, yet their mature thought appeared later. After Parliament passed a bill to defend the life of unborn abortion supporters, they did not quit their attempts to overthrow the recently established legal order. They managed to do so in 1996, and their plans were only thwarted by the Constitutional Court, which was then led by prof. Andrzej Zoll. Clearly, they did not care about any hypothetical danger of the pendulum movement. Yet, if we were to take this story seriously, the 1993 Act should be regarded as a "compromising" correction of left-wing radicalism, which was the laws of the Stalinist era. In view of the above, we should no longer be amazed that the language of both myths has never appeared in the debate in a situation where the public was dropped out and even discussed highly pro-abortional proposals to amend the current law.
This clearly shows that in the communicative of the pendulum we are dealing with a completely unilateral and functional tool, serving to defy the introduction of a more just law. In conclusion, it must be said that the story of the abortion compromise was created to service – by sticking to the analogy with the physical planet – for the support and hook that could be attached to the pendulum story. The point was that the state of consent for abortion, although limited, should be considered as the starting point of any debate and political process.
Maybe the pendulum is working after all.
But is the pendulum not true? After all, in the autumn of 2020, erstwhile the Constitutional Court ruling on eugenic abortion was passed, Law and Justice have indeed lost a fewer percent points of support that it has never recovered again. What should be judged about this? The best weapon against myths is to look more closely at the course of events. So let's look, very briefly, at the past of struggles for legal protection of people in the prenatal phase of life in Poland. It shows us something contrary to liberal myths, but at the same time consistent with their own practice – social and political action, not belief in 1 or another determinism, is crucial for achieving public goals.
In 1993, most Poles did not support the protection of life and it is hard to wonder. In the 1960s, the number of abortions carried out in Poland amounted to as much as 250 1000 a year, and in the full period of communist dictatorship about 20 million human lives were thus destroyed. This means that a very crucial part of Polish society in the post-war years was active in abortion. Most people do not want their actions to be branded in 1 way or another, and the proposal to restrict the right to abortion is indirect, even silent, but stigma of social evil over decades. For the limited triumph that the opinion for life took in Poland in the early 1990s, the decisive was first the formation and then the action of Catholic elites who decided to engage without looking at social sentiments. And I do not mean parliamentarians from the “open church” circles who voted together with the liberals, but many just people present in the various political groups of that time. The church has been doing formation work in this area since at least the 1950s. The 20th century thanks to its commitment to shaping good moral attitudes in the society of cards. Stefan Wyszynski.
Within 1 year of the entry into force of the Act, the number of abortions fell from tens of thousands to 600 cases. In the 1980s, the number of abortions in Poland ranged from 80 to 140 1000 per year. erstwhile post-communists introduced the social premise of abortion into the law in 1996, they no longer had specified strong public support, and they met with mass and strong social resistance, which gave the Constitutional Court not only moral but besides social legitimacy to make decisions for life. The reaction to the pro-abortionary actions of post-communists showed that society approved a reasonably crucial change from 1993. No pendulum determinism has worked. Another change to the worse was not the consequence of any temper fluctuations or mythical truths of public life, but political action. Similarly, the Constitutional Court's ruling was possible through opposition and social leaders. Let us add that during the year of application of the post-communist expression of the bill, the number of abortions increased to 3,000 cases. It never again reached the dramatic values of the communist years. Better law allowed society to reevaluate its own attitudes. However, this did not happen, the fresh bill would not have been, had it not been for the determination of circumstantial people.
Diversification on the right
During the years of the first regulation of law and justice (2005-2007), the talker of the Sejm Marek Jurek built a broad social and political coalition consisting of politicians of the majority of parliamentary parties, besides opposition parties who took joint action to change the Constitution. To defend human lives more clearly from conception. The action had all possible of success, but was pacified inside the right-wing environment itself. Jarosław Kaczyński torpedoed the actions of Mark Jurek – then his organization colleague – in keeping with the political process and work in the Sejm committees. He was already afraid of the determinism of the pendulum, as well as the opinion of his brother's wife, president of the Republic of Lech Kaczyński. Were it not for the fear of liberal fairy tales, the constitution would be changed and the state and society would adapt to the fresh situation. Would we be faced with protests? Perhaps, but it is yet not the street that rules the state. The addition to Article 38 of the Constitution that "Rzeczpospolita Polska provides everyone with legal protection of life" from conception would not straight affect the course of matters in the country, but would strengthen guarantees given by the state of life. This could be a tiny substance for society. Unfortunately, Jarosław Kaczyński showed then that he was afraid of liberals.
But were the “black marches” of 2016 and the 2020 protests after the Court’s judgement erstwhile the churches were devastated not a clear example of the pendulum mechanism? Isn't it the substance of protecting the life of the Law and Justice that he lost his power? This is the communicative in the largest opposition organization today. Again, however, we request to look at the context. These protests were part of a long-established atmosphere of tension, opposition, and even rage and hatred towards the regulation of the Law and Justice. It can be said that this atmosphere resulted. They were constantly heated with extra fuel, and the subject of abortion became just another pretext to ignite social anger by the dominant liberal media in Poland. erstwhile clashes about the protection of life initiated by the right or left side of the political scene besides caused contraventions, so it is not amazing that any people went out on the streets. The protests and manifestations themselves, even very stormy, are not different in a democratic context. So what happened in 2020? Jarosław Kaczyński again got frightened by a mythical pendulum, and the government of his group and the organization itself did not prepare politically for the expected judgement of the Constitutional Court. There was no social action, there was no affirmative message addressed to his own electorate, which was not all and is ideally pro life, there were no politicians standing behind the unborn. Thus, society saw the weakness of the state leaders in a case on which there is always large hesitation of opinion, and the leaders of the Law and Justice saw only 1 unstoppable pro-abortion component on the streets and believed in the self-fulfilling promise that the shuttle had moved.
In order to decently measure the deteriorating social sentiments at the time in the substance of protecting life, it is so not possible to ignore the constantly drained hatred of the right, but the inactivity of the centre-right government cannot be ignored. It is almost certain that PiS politicians will proceed to reproduce this liberal-left communicative of their own failure, so as not to take work for their mistakes. And there were more mistakes. During this time Jarosław Kaczyński promoted at least the alleged 5 for animals, whose postulates caused many right-wing voters to look more willingly towards the Confederation. Then the future years of the COVID-19 and PiS pandemics did not have much chance to recover a fewer percent points lost in autumn 2020.
Wrong wheel
The causal ellipse thus closes, due to the fact that without rejecting belief in liberal myths a real renewal of the political form of the modern Republic will not be possible. present it can be said that again in 2024 past repeated itself to undermine the story of a political pendulum. Emotions after 2020 have long gone, and according to the investigation conducted during the presidential run by OGB, support for abortion has fallen. And it was among the women who were most instigated against life in 2016 and 2020. The illegal alleged Leschina guidelines, which opened the way for fanatical abortion doctors to, so far, the unpunished killing of children was not the consequence of any pendulum, but of human will. It was a political action aimed at those PO voters who hatred the Law and Justice, the Church, the Catholics, or more broadly the right to kill children.
The conclusion is simple, in the struggles for a better Poland, in which the liberal revolution will be crossed off, 1 must act without any fear.
Tomasz Rowinski
The text was created as part of the co-operation of the author with the Institute of Ordo Iuris simultaneously appeared on the portals christianitas.org and basins.pl.
