Protests erupt against Polish gov’t ban on women’s right to abortion
https://themilitant.com/2021/02/06/protests-erupt-against-polish-govt-ban-on-womens-right-to-abortion/
BY EMMA JOHNSON
Vol. 85/No. 6
February 15, 2021
Tens of thousands took to streets across Poland Jan. 29, including in
Warsaw, above, to protest government’s imposition of near-total ban on
women’s right to choose to have an abortion.
REUTERS/ALEKSANDRA SZMIGIEL
Tens of thousands took to streets across Poland Jan. 29, including in
Warsaw, above, to protest government’s imposition of near-total ban on
women’s right to choose to have an abortion.
The Polish government moved Jan. 27 to implement a near-total ban on
women’s right to choose to have an abortion, effective immediately. The
ban had been adopted three months earlier, but was postponed under the
pressure of mass demonstrations of hundreds of thousands across the
country.
Following the government’s announcement, tens of thousands rapidly took
to the streets, especially in Warsaw, the capital. “We are inviting
everyone, please, go out, be motivated, so we can walk together, make a
mark,” protest leader Marta Lempart said.
Gabriela Stepniak was among those who joined the march in Warsaw. “I
want us to have our basic rights, the right to decide about our bodies,
the right to decide what we want to do and if we want to bear children
and in what circumstances to have children,” she told Reuters.
Some protesters carried banners saying, “I think, I feel, I decide.”
Some marchers wore green bandanas, the symbol for the movement in
Argentina that recently won legalization.
“The anti-abortion law was published late in the evening, so we had
little time to prepare and protests were organized only in a few
places,” Aleksandra Musil told CBS News Jan. 28. “Today, they take place
all over the country. I am organizing one myself in my town.”
The government claimed the protests were illegal, in violation of
coronavirus restrictions on public gatherings. There was a heavy police
presence and arrests were made, but the protests continued.
Attempts by the ruling Law and Justice Party to pass extreme
anti-abortion legislation in parliament had failed in 2016 and 2018
after similar mass protests. To get around the pressure of these public
mobilizations, the government placed the decision in the hands of the
Constitutional Court, the highest judicial body in the country, which
adopted the ban in October.
Even though polls show a majority oppose the new restrictions, the
latest round of demonstrations have yet to approach the size of actions
last fall, when some 400,000 took to the streets.
The implementation leaves few legal options for abortion. The ruling
bans the procedure in the case “of a severe and irreversible fetal
defect or incurable illness that threatens the fetus’s life,” which was
the grounds for 98% of all legal abortions in Poland in 2019. The only
legal openings now are cases of rape or incest, or if the woman’s health
or life is in danger.
For now, women are left with either paying for an illegal abortion
inside the country or traveling abroad for a legal one. Some 150,000
women a year have done so over the past period. With coronavirus travel
restrictions in place, this option is closed for now. One banner in a
demonstration in the city of Rzeszow captured the class content of the
Polish abortion restriction, “Abortion ban is discrimination against the
poorest.”
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Emmett F. Fields “ Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do
not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is
an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively,
fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.
” ― Emmett F. Fields