Polish women have not been this angry for this long, and they are taking on the ruling conservatives.
Incensed by remarks from the country’s most powerful politician, former Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who accused them of drinking excessively and keeping the birthrate low, many took the streets of Warsaw on Monday.
It is a repeat of scenes from two years ago when hundreds of thousands of women marched against a near-total ban on legal abortions, in Poland’s largest public protests in decades.
Photo: Bloomberg
What is different this time is that the ruling party is facing the biggest challenge to its two-term rule before general elections in October next year.
Monday’s rally “is important to remind women that we have election in a year’s time,” said Marta Lempart, its organizer.
Protesters gathered outside Kaczynski’s house in Warsaw, where police dispersed a crowd of mostly women with batons and tear gas in 2020. If the venue is symbolic, so is the date, coming exactly 104 years after Polish women secured the right to vote.
The Law and Justice party, of which Kaczynski is the leader, won over some women when it came to power in 2015 for the lavish baby bonuses it handed out.
However, it quickly alienated many others after the country curbed abortion rights and the government cracked down on protests. It has also been trying to curtail access to comprehensive sex education and threatened to withdraw from an international pact aimed at tackling domestic violence.
Polish women are now the government’s biggest critics and most vocal opponents.
As the elections approach, the government, which has strong ties to the Catholic Church, seems to be digging in even as polls say that declining support amid a widening cost of living crisis could leave it unable to form a majority.
Sensing an opening, the opposition Civic Platform, led by former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, has already pledged to table a bill allowing legal abortion in the first trimester of the pregnancy.
The idea was backed by 70 percent of respondents in a Nov. 7 to 9 survey by Ipsos for the OKO.press news Web site.
“It was the votes of women in the past that decided whether the government stays or falls,” said Michal Fedorowicz, who worked on a presidential campaign for an opposition candidate in 2015 and now runs Internet and Social Media Research (IBIMS).
Abortion has been back in focus in Europe since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court, with a divide hardening between conservative and liberal forces.
Italian women fear that new right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni could break a promise not to cut back their rights. She opposes abortion as well as the legalization of same-sex marriage.
On Thursday, the French National Assembly voted to enshrine abortion rights in the country’s constitution, a first step toward making that a reality. French President Emmanuel Macron also wants access to legal abortion included in the EU charter.
Poland’s abortion law was amended by a top court ruling even though only one in 10 women backed the move. The tightening of restrictions means pregnancies can be terminated only in case of rape or incest, or if the woman’s life is in danger due to — among other reasons — irreversible or lethal damage to the fetus.
Poland recorded 17,000 fewer births in the first nine months of the year compared with last year, its statistics office said.
Nongovernment groups attribute that to women now being afraid to get pregnant.
The call to ease abortion restrictions intensified after Izabela Sajbor, a 30-year-old hairdresser from a small town in the country’s south died of septic shock after doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy, citing the anti-abortion ruling.
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