Thousands of people on Friday rallied in Warsaw and across Poland, defying government orders and risking COVID-19 contagion to voice their anger at a court ruling banning almost all abortions.
Chanting anti-government slogans, protesters in Warsaw marched carrying the symbol of their movement — a red thunderbolt.
There were scuffles with far-right counter-protesters but the demonstration was mostly peaceful on the ninth straight day of protests since the court decision.
Photo: Reuters
“We’re prepared to fight till the end,” said Marta Lempart, cofounder of the Women’s Strike movement which is helping to organize the protests.
The movement said that hundreds of thousands of people took part.
“The revolution that is in progress in Poland is not just a struggle for abortion. It is a struggle for freedom,” she said.
Photo: Reuters
“We’ve Had Enough,” “My Body, My Choice” read placards held up by the mostly young protesters, who also chanted expletive-ridden anti-government slogans.
City authorities estimated that about 50,000 people took part in the protest in Warsaw and police said that they had made “several arrests” in two incidents.
Women’s rights groups organizing the protest face possible prosecution as gatherings of more than five people are banned under COVID-19 prevention rules.
Smaller rallies were also expected in dozens of other Polish cities, including Krakow and Wroclaw, as well as abroad in Barcelona, Vienna and elsewhere.
Mass protests began last week when Poland’s Constitutional Court ruled that an existing law allowing the abortion of damaged fetuses was “incompatible” with the constitution.
Protesters have focused their anger on the governing ultra-Catholic Law and Justice party, whose lawmakers asked the court to rule on the provision.
Poland, a traditionally devout Catholic country of 38 million people, already has one of the most stringent abortion laws in Europe.
There are fewer than 2,000 legal abortions every year, and women’s groups estimate that about 200,000 women abort either illegally or abroad.
Once published in the official journal, the constitutional court ruling would ban all abortions except in cases of rape and incest or when the life of the mother is in danger.
The government has defended the verdict, saying that it would halt “eugenic abortions,” but human rights groups have said it would force women to carry non-viable pregnancies.
On Friday, in a bid to find a compromise to defuse public anger, Polish President Andrzej Duda proposed a draft amendment to the abortion law.
The bill would ban abortion in the case of damaged foetuses unless medical tests showed a high probability that the baby would be born dead or with a terminal illness or defect.
Liberal opposition lawmaker Katarzyna Lubnauer said that the amendment was “unacceptable”.
“This is a proposal along the lines of: I stole 100 zloty from you, but I’ll return 50,” she told the news channel TVN24.
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