The Women’s Complaint: sociolegal mobilization against authoritarian backsliding following the 2020 abortion law in Poland

Abstract

The decision of the Constitutional Tribunal in October 2020 has severely curtailed women’s reproductive rights in Poland. Mass protests ensued. This article focuses on the untold story of a productive rupture that channelled the protesters’ efforts into a mass legal mobilization against the tribunal’s judgement to the European Court of Human Rights. These applications, known as the “Women’s Complaint,” were filed by over one thousand Polish women. Triangulating between analysis of interviews with human rights lawyers and feminist activists, and the legal reasoning of the petition, this article’s original contribution traces the evolution of the Women’s Complaint from a reproductive rights dispute to a challenge to the government’s authoritarian backsliding to better understand the relationship between social conflicts and legal mobilization. Reproductive rights and democratic values are inextricable; threats to one reinforce threats to the other. The Women’s Complaint is about women standing up for their reproductive rights and–in effect–spearheading a much broader rights-based litigation against authoritarianism.