Thousands protest against Polish abortion restrictions
WARSAW (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Poles dressed in black protested across the country on Friday against an attempt by the ruling conservatives and the powerful Catholic Church to ban most abortions.
The “Stop Abortion” draft bill, opposed by numerous rights groups, would remove the main legal recourse Polish women have for getting a termination in a country that already has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the European Union.
“I am against treating woman as an inferior type of human being,” Malgorzata, 58, a psychologist who joined the “Black Friday” protest in Warsaw told Reuters. “I support women's rights to decide about their bodies and their lives.” Under current rules, abortion is allowed in three circumstances -- danger to the mother's health, rape or incest, and when prenatal tests show serious, irreversible damage to the foetus.
The bill, already approved for further debate by the lower chamber of parliament in January and by a parliamentary committee earlier this week, would remove the third category, which currently covers more than 90 percent of legal abortions.
It is the second bid by the ruling Law and Justice ( PiS) party to tighten abortion rules. In 2016, after about 100,000 people joined protests and support for PiS declined, the party rejected a bill that would have imposed a near-total ban.
Several thousand protesters gathered near the parliament building in Warsaw, with banners reading: “Woman is a Human Being Not an Incubator” and “We Are Going after Law and Justice”.
The protesters chanted “freedom of choice instead of terror”.
A Warsaw city spokesman said about 55,000 people took part in the protest in the capital, the largest one in the country. Police gave a lower estimate at 20,000. Thousands of people participated in other major cities.
A group of U. N. human rights experts called on parliament to reject the bill, saying it risked causing serious damage to women's health.
“Preventing women from accessing safe and legal abortion care jeopardises their human rights,” Nils Muiznieks of the Council of Europe human rights group said.