At the end of October – and in the face of the coronavirus crisis, as well as counter-demonstrations by nationalists – Warsaw came alive with protestors fighting for women’s rights.
In the largest demonstration since the fall of Communism, and the largest protest against ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) since they came to power in 2015, over 100,000 people gathered around the main thoroughfares of the city to campaign after the country’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that abortions in cases of foetal abnormality were unconstitutional. This scenario accounts for 98% of all legal abortions in Poland, with the ruling therefore effectively banning abortion in the country.
The protest wasn’t just that day – since the ruling, activists have kept up demonstrations across Poland, and across the world, against the decision. And concerns over women’s rights in Poland aren’t just about the court’s ruling, either.
Since PiS were elected in 2015, efforts to limit women’s freedoms and sexual rights have been under attack, with new laws attempting to restrict access to abortion and contraception, as well as the promotion of conservative and harmful attitudes towards women’s health. Recent surveys have revealed how abortion and menstruation are seen as taboo topics, with political leaders reinforcing misconceptions. Recently, Poland’s Justice Minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, also announced that the country will be terminating its ratification of the Istanbul Convention, a treaty that prevents and combats domestic violence. The Polish Prime Minister has deemed the document “ideological”, with the Deputy Justice Minister from PiS also calling it “gender gibberish”.
According to Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar from Poland’s Women’s Rights Centre, women have faced increasing threats under PiS in recent years due to the party’s religious and traditionalist alliances.
“PiS is a morally conservative party that enjoys great support from the Catholic Church in Poland,” Gzyra-Iskandar says. “It is also not without significance that in Poland, fundamentalist and religious organizations which perceive the role of women in a traditional way are gaining more and more power. Such a broad conservative alliance results not only in the lack of progress in the protection of women’s rights, but also in the withdrawal of this protection. This alliance is the face of Polish patriarchy.”
But though there are several different examples of the increasing struggle by women for their rights in Poland, abortion laws have proved a major sticking point. PiS politicians and supporters argue children have a right to life, so that they can be christened.
The recent abortion ruling in fact follows years of campaigning by PiS to tighten Poland’s abortion legislation, which is already one of the most restrictive in Europe. Legal abortions number only around 1100 a year (with 38 million people residing in the country); out of 1110 legal abortions last year, 1074 were listed as being due to foetal abnormalities, the reason now banned by the Constitutional Tribunal.
“The first attempts to tighten the abortion law appeared in 2016, in the second year of PiS’s rule, and were repeated from time to time,” says Gzyra-Iskandar. “So far it has been possible to stop them. At this moment, we are in a clinch.”
Although the Constitutional Tribunal made the recent ruling on abortion, the institution comprises of judges appointed by PiS in 2016, with activists arguing it is now under government influence. Since the ruling, women have reported struggles in accessing abortion.
However, the decision appears to have backfired for PiS. Recent polls have shown high levels of societal acceptance for abortion, and opposition to the Tribunal’s ruling, with 71% of Poles seeing the decision negatively, according to a poll for Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita. A separate poll by Kantar found 62% of Poles also believe that abortion should be legal in specific circumstances, with only 11% wanting it completely banned. And, in terms of political polls, support for PiS has dropped to the lowest figures since 2015.
“During the recent protests, on the streets were mainly seen young people who, despite their age, are very aware of their rights and have enough of the oppressive system that limits them,” explains Gzyra-Iskandar.
“And it is not only about the current ruling party – it is about something more: about the entire patriarchal culture, about the relationship between power and the church. This is the rebellion of a new generation that no longer wants to play a game in which it is only a pawn. Young people, young women want to have a right to speak freely and want to their rights to be fully respected.”
Women’s rights might have been under threat for years, but protests have been fighting restrictions every step of the way. In 2016, when limits to the abortion law were first proposed, a national strike called ‘Czarny Protest’ (‘Black Protest’) brought thousands of women onto the streets, eventually causing PiS to reject its plans. Now, activists are hopeful new protests will do the same – or at least help women left vulnerable due to the new ruling.
“Our foundation participated in protests against the tightening of abortion law in all the cities where we have branches. In addition, we inform about the situation and what are the current possibilities of making an abortion – many people are lost in the current situation, there is a lot of misinformation, which we correct, refer to sources and proven abortion support organizations,” adds Gzyra-Iskandar.
The protests have died down a little, however, since those first furious demonstrations in the days after the ruling was announced. Rising coronavirus cases have led the government to impose a new partial lockdown, whilst PiS politicians – like Deputy Prime Minister and de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński – have said activists aim to destroy Poland, rallying supporters to defend churches against them.
“We know, however, that this is not the end of the fight and that we are regenerating our strength before the next steps that we will take to prevent the tightening of the abortion law, and even lead to the adoption of a law restoring women’s dignity,” says Gzyra-Iskandar.
Certainly, the current situation appears to be a turning point, with widespread resistance to any further curbs to women’s rights.
“I think a breakthrough has already happened,” Gzyra-Iskandar explains. “The mobilization of the opponents of the tightening of the abortion law was enormous, it reached every corner of Poland, even the bastions of the ruling party. Young people gave these protests a new character: creative slogans on banners, blunt, even vulgar language, dance music, pro-abortion demands, first public collective abortion coming-out – it is a new quality for protests in Poland.”
As a result, the ruling itself has come under threat – and not just by the public. After a week of protests, President Andrzej Duda proposed a looser compromise, which could see abortions banned in cases where foetuses are diagnosed with Down syndrome, but allowing abortions in cases of defects which make the foetus unviable. However, women’s right groups want greater freedom.
“The masses fighting for women’s rights say clearly: enough compromises, enough silencing us,” says Gzyra-Iskandar. “We want to decide about our own lives.”
Image credit: Konto na chwilę
