Gendered responses to abortion rulings: The case of the 2020 Polish Constitutional Tribunal decision

Restrictive abortion policies are a staple of the right-wing (populist) agenda. In many countries, most prominently the U.S., right-wing groups have appealed to courts in a push towards limiting or effectively banning abortion. At the same time, restrictions on reproductive rights have proven to be relatively unpopular with the electorate, especially with women. Despite its prominence in recent electoral campaigns, we still know little about the electoral politics of abortion rights. In this paper, we examine politicians’ reactions to the October 2020 landmark ruling of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, which, effective in January 2021, resulted in an almost complete ban on abortions. Relying on a collection of more than 5000 court-related tweets by members of the Polish Sejm between January 2020 and December 2021, we compare how male and female politicians addressed the court ruling. We show that there are substantial differences in the reactions across political parties and MPs’ gender. We contrast our findings with the reactions to other significant court rulings during the same period.