Religion-Related Legitimations in Abortion Policy Making in Poland. What Do They Tell Us About the Public Role of Religion?

Abstract

The existing research on and conceptualization of the public presence of religion usually builds on the Habermasian understanding of the public sphere. This has centered the discussion on the public presence of religion around the question of where such a presence is justified. Discourse theories offer an alternative understanding, stating that the public sphere is an area of struggles where diverse discourses compete to establish a definition of social reality as taken for granted and hegemonic. This shift opens the question of how a given definition of social reality becomes taken for granted, pointing to the role of legitimation. Against this background, our article argues that religion’s ability to serve as a valuable “resource” for building justifications in discursive struggles for hegemony could serve as indicators of its presence in the public sphere. Along these lines, we analyze religion’s legitimizing role in abortion policy-making in Poland.