Attorney Jerzy Kwaśniewski is working to defend life, family, marriage, inalienable rights, and national sovereignty as president of a Poland-based think tank, the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture. In the past 10 years, Ordo Iuris has become prominent and influential, both domestically and in the European Union, providing legal assistance to those whose conscience rights, freedom of speech, or freedom to assemble have been threatened.
This think tank is also active in European tribunals — in particular, the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg — and has consultative status at the United Nations.
Though Ordo Iuris is often referred to unflatteringly as “ultra-conservative,” “radical Catholics,” or “Christian fundamentalists,” Kwaśniewski told Live Action News that his group simply stands “on the side of natural law and human rights as they were from the beginning,” offering a “robust criticism” to how “radical and woke revolutions,” as well as neo-Marxism, “have seized and deteriorated certain human rights” for years. These are “fundamental rights, such as the right to life, freedom of speech – which is limited by the latest manifestations of censorship – and academic freedom,” he noted.
Ordo Iuris, he said, “stand[s] on the side of the first human-rights legal documents, which were all derived from the Christian conception of natural law and human dignity inherent in Western Civilization.” The group also stands “invariably on the side of common sense and law….”
Rebuilding from the ruins of communism
Kwaśniewski co-founded Ordo Iuris in 2013 because, after half a century of communism, “Poland was a desert when it came to civic engagement in public life and social life.” He told Live Action News, “In this desert, the only remnant of a healthy society was the Catholic Church, which survived half a century of communist captivity. And after 20 years of freedom, organizing and civic circles began to emerge only at a grassroots level. Before that, the only such circles were those artificially set up by George Soros, who was trying to dominate this NGO scene in Poland, as well as in other countries in the region.”
There was “a lack of a professional voice in defense of basic rights and freedoms. A voice that would defend conservative values, that would stand on the side of life and liberty, and oppose liberal domination in academia, in the courts, and in the media,” said Kwaśniewski. “We began by preparing expert reports, analyses from the field of human rights, from the field of philosophy, from the field of government science,” in order to advance the pro-life, pro-family, and pro-freedom cause.
At the same time, Ordo Iuris began defending these values in the courtrooms of Poland.
Before starting Ordo Iuris, Kwaśniewski had been working in both banking law and corporate law, and began to experience burnout. It was his wife, he said, who suggested he become involved in pro-life work. He began to do pro bono legal work for a pro-life foundation in Poland, “since it was having problems with its activists being tried under criminal law for organizing pro-life exhibitions in various cities,” he said.
He quickly found that he was most fulfilled when he was “really helping people who are doing something great, who are risking their own freedom, who are often risking their own careers, just to stand up for basic values.” He began to find “like-minded lawyers,” and they networked; Ordo Iuris was born out of this.
Resisting 30 years of attacks against life and the family
“To some extent, Poland is stopping radical ideologies from transforming social life. We remain a country where life is protected, despite 30 years of attacks on the defense of life,” Kwaśniewski said. “We remain a country where the identity of marriage as a union between a man and a woman is defended. We remain a country where parental authority is successfully defended.”
Because of the Ordo Iuris Institute’s court successes, he said “this defense of life… has been strengthened in public perception.” His organization has successfully fought against attacks on life, as well as on marriage and the family unit. “Liberal governments have attempted to import to Poland the ‘Child Protection Services’ systems from Germany or Norway, which are among the most radically dismissive of parental rights,” he said, and Ordo Iuris has “brought this struggle to these countries, and Norway has already been found by the Strasbourg Court to have violated human rights in dozens of cases.”
Ordo Iuris, he said, opposes concepts such as “gender ideology and woke ideology, which interfere with our private lives, which enter the family, which enter schools.” He added, “To resist these effectively, we must not only oppose them mobilizing society but employing very concrete legal arguments from the fields of constitutional law and fundamental rights.”
As the government changes, so must the strategy
Before the 2023 elections in Poland brought in more liberal leadership, conservatives were the ruling party for eight years — a time which Kwaśniewski called “a special period” for his organization.”With our independence from the government, including complete financial independence, we could apply effective pressure on the government. On a government that was potentially capable of making conservative legal reforms, introducing conservative social policies, or conservative cultural changes, but was obviously very reluctant to do so for fear of losing support.”
Now, he said, “the situation is completely changed.”
“On the one hand, cooperation with today’s conservative opposition, including the Law and Justice party, is much better, as we are the only institution that can provide significant background knowledge for conservative parties. On the other hand, we are under the microscope, officially targeted by the government side,” he said, noting that a leaked document showed how the group was blacklisted by Poland’s Culture Minister. “[B]ut we have also been directly targeted and attacked by Justice Minister Adam Bodnar and mentioned by the government side in countless statements as a dark force committed to stopping liberal reforms.”
Under liberal government leadership, Kwaśniewski said the “role of the Ordo Iuris Institute” is now “to be the nerve center for all those who want to stand up for normality against the radical liberal revolution.” He is grateful that the support of their donors keeps them going as an independent organization “at a time when we are squarely under attack.”
And it is not just liberal efforts in Poland that Ordo Iuris is fighting.
“We can see a number of efforts on the part of the European Union, both soft and hard, that are aimed at curtailing the defense of life in its various stages,” Kwaśniewski told Live Action News. “We have the policies of the European Union, which are aimed at forcing the legalization of abortion, and the actions of the human rights body that is the Council of Europe alongside the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. And we are also dealing with efforts that are beginning, but which will probably move to a climax over the next few years, aimed at forcing the acceptance of euthanasia in Poland. In the meantime, there are also actions that deal with surrogacy and in vitro [IVF], where we are also active. And on each of these fronts it is necessary to adopt the right strategy and tactics.”
He said the group is working to ensure that individual countries know their sovereign rights — that they cannot simply be forced to implement the resolutions of the EU Parliament. He noted that in his group’s efforts to fight against surrogacy, “we participate in an international coalition, and even the Declaration of Casablanca, which unites a great many circles, from very different ideological camps, in opposing surrogacy.” He noted that even feminist groups oppose surrogacy because they are against “the instrumental objectification of the female body, which becomes an industrial incubator in the production of children.” Ordo Iuris is also proactively publishing written works to “defin[e] the rhetorical framework” to enable Polish doctors and other leaders to stand against the push toward euthanasia. “…[E]very year dozens of such opinions… arrive at the European Court of Human Rights, exerting a certain influence on case law and particularly emphasizing the decision-making autonomy of member states, of European nation-states, in these matters,” he noted.
The merging of two pro-life Polish powerhouses
Earlier this year, the Ordo Iuris Institute merged with The Center for Life and Family under common leadership.
The latter, said Kwaśniewski, is “several years older than the Ordo Iuris Institute” and “brought the Marches for Life and Family to Poland” after one of the group’s leaders attended pro-life marches in the U.S., and later witnessed marches in France and Switzerland. This leader then “decided to start a similar initiative in Poland almost 20 years ago. To this day, the Center for Life and Family conducts a hundred or so march events each year.”
He noted that The Center for Life and Family “is undertaking a great many formation initiatives. It runs a network of family-friendly schools, in which it promotes family-friendly schooling principles, produces videos on sex education and the permanence of marriage, and conducts conferences on such topics,” while The Ordo Iuris Institute “is a more analytical, interventionist, legal center.”
“There are still two brands, two ways of operating, one more grassroots and activist-oriented, the other more professional and focused on legal issues, but now they are under common leadership,” creating “the largest conservative center” in Poland — and all of Europe.
Keeping Poland pro-life
Kwaśniewski told Live Action News that most Poles claim to be in favor of the defense of human life in the womb. But polling shows that these sentiments can “fluctuate,” and he noted that “it all comes down to details.”
“When we ask questions about very specific situations, it turns out that Poles are against abortion on demand, and they are against late-term abortion,” he said. “But when we ask about eugenic abortion for birth defects, when we ask about pharmacological abortion, and when we ask about abortion that concerns conception through rape, not only are views much more divided, but those who would accept such solutions even have the upper hand.”
Kwaśniewski said that the majority pro-life support in Poland is “largely because, in 1993, under pressure from Pope John Paul II and the Church, against public opinion, the communist pro-abortion law was repealed and replaced with a law protecting life,” and, amazingly, “Within a few years, there was a change in public views. The law has exerted tremendous formative pressure on society.” He noted that “the Church – which in other matters is often passive, which in other matters we would often like to be more active – speaks with one voice in the matter of defense of life in Poland.”
He also noted that the country’s outlawing of eugenic, discriminatory abortions on children with prenatal diagnoses “is also beginning to have such an impact on public consciousness.”
Still, he added, much of the oldest generation (which he said “is closely related to the direct abortion experience of those people who were of working age during the communist era”) and the youngest generation (which “is naturally most influenced by the media, social media, and those opinion leaders who dominate social media”) still exhibit a high acceptance of abortion. Among the youngest generation, however, he said “the views of this young generation [become more pro-life] when they start families themselves, when they settle down.”
One of the country’s strongest pro-life resources, according to Kwaśniewski, is having “A law that protects life. A law that tells every child carried under his or her mother’s heart, You are a human being. The entire community, the entire nation, the entire state supports you, recognizes your humanity, and thus, protects you equally to a child who has already been born. This shapes attitudes. It shapes the attitudes of doctors to see even more about their patient’s child. It shapes the attitudes of parents.”
But, he added, practical help for families is absolutely necessary in addition to strong legal protections for preborn children.
“… Here, on the one hand, we have a gigantic network of centers of Caritas Poland, which is the largest charitable organization in Poland, and which runs the vast majority of single-mother centers, support centers for parents in difficult situations, and especially mothers in difficult situations who need help and support when they become pregnant, but there is also state support,” he said, noting that for several years, Ordo Iuris has been pushing for “more solutions and more programs that would increasingly provide such soft support for entire families, or single mothers who face challenges with pregnancy and the birth of a child. Often a child who comes unexpectedly, a child whom someone might call unwanted, whom an abortionist would want to kill. And we say you need support so that the child can be loved, so that he or she can be welcomed, so that he or she can perhaps be put up for adoption.”
Currently, efforts in this regard are underway and programs are in place, but more must be done.
“We are constantly advocating more solutions, from tax solutions to those offering very concrete help to mothers… where you can turn, who can help you. This is the kind of information that should reach everyone, to provide a little reassurance and security.”
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