Protesters look to Catholic cousins
Poles have taken to the streets of Warsaw, Gdansk and other cities for a third night of protests after a near-total abortion ban took effect, giving Poland one of the most restrictive laws in Europe.
There were some small scuffles with police, who used tear gas on protesters.
The constitutional court ruled in October to ban abortions in cases of fetal disorders, even severe and fatal ones, and the ruling finally became law on Thursday.
One of the leaders of the protest movement, Klementyna Suchanow, was released from police detention yesterday after being arrested the night before for entering the grounds of the constitutional court in Warsaw and nailing a poster to a door. She said the poster celebrated the recent liberalisation of the abortion law in Argentina, another strongly Catholic nation, and expressed hope that Poland would be next.
The high court is under the political control of the governing right-wing Law and Justice party, which had faced pres- sure from an ultra-conservative group to further restrict what had already been one of the European Union’s most restrictive abortion laws.
Mass nationwide protests have been held repeatedly since then, growing into the largest protest movement in post-communist Poland.
The court’s judges argued that allowing abortion when there were congenital defects was unconstitutional because the Polish constitution protected human life. The only remaining legal justifications for abortion under Polish law are if the woman’s life or health is at risk, or if a pregnancy
results from rape or incest.
Opponents call the law draconian, saying it forces women to carry to term even fetuses with lethal defects or with disorders so considerable that they could live their entire lives severely disabled or in a vegetative state.
Suchanow and Marta Lempart, the leaders of the Women’s Strike group that has spearheaded street protests against the law, are now looking for inspiration to Argentina. Suchanow said Polish activists were already in contact with women’s rights activists in
the South American nation from their experiences.
She said the struggle for a liberalised abortion law would now focus on bringing about deeper social change that she hoped would one day bear fruit when Poland had ‘‘a more reasonable government’’.
Irene Donadio, a leading strategist with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said the erosion of judicial independence in Poland. She accused authorities of trying to ‘‘intimidate and terrify’’ the protesters.
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