The anti-abortion bill that enraged Polish women
An attempt by Polish conservatives to impose a total ban on abortion has backfired badly, said Le Monde (Paris). Poland already has some of the tightest abortion laws in Europe; it is allowed only in cases of rape or incest, when the pregnancy poses a health risk to the mother, or when the foetus is seriously deformed. But a new bill was put forward which would have forbidden it altogether; women who seek abortions, and doctors who perform them, would have faced five-year sentences. The bill was initiated by hard-line Catholic campaigners, who collected enough signatures for it to go before parliament. And the ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party (PIS), which has called for a “cultural counter-revolution”, offered its support. However, only about 10% of the public backed it, and it infuriated large numbers of Polish women. Their “Black Monday” protest last week, in which 100,000 black-clad women in 60 cities boycotted work to demonstrate against the plan, was the strongest expression of political dissent in Poland for years. Shocked by the backlash, ministers distanced themselves from the bill, and MPS voted to reject it by 352 to 58.
Reproductive rights have been a battlefield in Polish politics since the fall of communism, said Barbara Nowacka in Die Zeit (Hamburg). In 1992, a draconian law was passed that allowed doctors to refuse to perform an abortion on grounds of conscience. In one recent case, a leading gynaecologist forced a woman to give birth to a severely deformed baby, who “died in agony in front of its parents”. Anti-abortion activists quote official statistics that say fewer than 2,000 abortions were performed in Poland last year; they see no reason this figure can’t be reduced to zero. What they don’t grasp is that they’re only driving it underground: each year up to 150,000 abortions are thought to be carried out illegally, or in neighbouring countries such as Germany and Slovakia.
The government is rightly “terrified” by the fury unleashed, said Michal Danielewski in Gazeta Wyborcza (Warsaw). Although PIS leader Jarosław Kaczynski saw the dangers from the start, allowing a free vote, his party rushed to embrace it. Foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski may live to regret his patronising response to the protests: “let them play,” he said. Until now the PIS has easily brushed off complaints, usually from foreign critics, about its hard-line agenda. But it’s another matter when ordinary Poles rise up in vast numbers to demonstrate. It goes to show that Polish society is a lot more liberal than its rulers.