WCarrying banners reading “The revolution has a womb” and “My body, my choice,” they poured into the streets of Poland, braving coronavirus restrictions and sub-zero temperatures to take part in the country’s largest protests since the fall of communism. .
Three years later, the fight against Poland’s draconian abortion measures has moved from the streets to the country’s legislature, in what campaigners describe as a crucial test for the country’s new government.
“Women helped the current government win,” said Kamila Ferenc of the Federation for Women and Family Planning. “There were a lot of explanations, a lot of promises.”
Anything less than the liberalization of laws would create a sense that the new government had “cheated” the hundreds of thousands who had taken to the streets, she added. “It will be a shame and a disrespect to a large number of women in Poland.”
In the run-up to the October elections, the Civic Coalition, led by Donald Tusk, pledged to abolish the country’s near-total ban on abortion within 100 days of its election. As the days since his election as prime minister steadily dwindle, campaigners say there are few signs of change.
“It’s very disappointing,” said Marta Lempart of the Polish Women’s Strike, a key player in organizing the mass protests. “We won these elections – it is women and young people who won these elections.”
Three bills have been announced so far, all aimed at liberalizing the country’s abortion laws. In November, the left-wing party announced that it would submit two bills: a bill that would legalize abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy and another bill that would decriminalize assisting with abortion.
Late last month, Tusk his party said would also put forward its own bill that would allow abortion up to the twelfth week. Both the Civic Coalition and the Left bills include provisions that would allow late-stage abortions under circumstances such as a threat to the mother’s life or developmental disabilities.
So far there is no confirmed date for the first reading of these bills in parliament, Ferenc said.
The centrist Third Way party, a junior member of the Tusk-led coalition, has reportedly considered introducing legislation that would call for the country to return to Poland’s strict rules. laws from 1993, It was fought between political leaders and the Catholic Church, which controlled the position until it was further tightened in 2020, Ferenc said.
The original 1993 laws, which were themselves among the most restrictive in Europe, only allowed abortions in cases of fetal abnormalities, rape, incest or if the mother’s life and health were at risk. The 2020 tightening also banned terminations in the case of fetal abnormalities, sparking nationwide protests.
Despite widespread support for the liberalization of abortion in Polish society, Ferenc said it is likely that the two bills calling for abortion up to the 12th week may not gain enough support in the new parliament to pass the first reading.
“We are afraid that only this most conservative bill, which aims to restore the previous legal situation in the field of abortion, will be passed, and the rest will be rejected,” she said. “And that spells disaster for us as women’s rights defenders.”
She attributed the situation to the various political groups that make up the coalition government. Although the left and the Civic Coalition have expressed support for reproductive rights, Tusk recently admitted that he had failed to convince Third Way leaders, who had long expressed more conservative positions on the issue.
Ferenc called on Tusk to “try harder” when it came to making a deal with the Third Way. “That’s politics, you have to negotiate,” she said. “Especially when it comes to women’s rights and abortion rights, because the situation is serious.”
The country’s crackdown on abortion has been linked to the deaths of at least six women, as some doctors prioritize saving fetuses — either for ideological reasons or in an effort to avoid legal consequences — in what Human Rights Watch described last September as a “climate of fear that has increased risks for women and girls.”
Things have improved somewhat since then, Ferenc said, although the near-total ban remains in effect. “Physicians, doctors and hospitals realize that they are now less supervised by the Public Prosecution Service and so on, and fortunately we have not heard of a single new case of maternal death,” she said.
“But the threat is still pending,” she added. “It’s ongoing, so it could happen any day, at any time.”
after newsletter promotion
The fight to secure abortion rights has been further complicated by the suggestion, put forward by some members of the Third Way, that a referendum be held on the issue.
It is an idea rejected by many activists, including Ferenc. “We should not vote on human rights using a formula like a referendum,” she said, citing concerns that the issue could easily fall prey to manipulation and disinformation campaigns. “Individuals cannot be deprived of their rights because some groups in society are against abortion.”
During the Polish Women’s Strike, a petition was launched to demand that any abortion bill be sent to a parliamentary committee for further study, regardless of whether they receive enough support to pass the final vote.
“Imagine: these are bills that are supported by 70% of the people in Poland,” Lempart said. “So this is clearly not what we expected in a democracy – this whole ‘not now, there are more important issues’ story.”
Two polls published in recent days it has emerged that about half of the public supports the proposals of the Civic Coalition and the Left.
Even if the bills are supported by a majority of parliament, questions remain whether the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, who is aligned with the right-wing former government, will sign them into law.
That uncertainty hovered over Tusk’s recent announcement that the new government had approved a bill to allow the purchase of the morning-after pill without a prescription for people over the age of 15, reversing a decision by the previous government. Although the bill has yet to be passed by parliament, if passed, it could still be vetoed by Duda.
Lempart has brushed aside concerns about Duda, whose term ends in August 2025. “There is a risk that the president will not sign any bill. So maybe we should close parliament until August 2025?”
Instead, she described the issue as a distraction, seemingly aimed solely at derailing the push for change when it comes to abortion. “They say, ‘Why are you working on that if there’s no chance the president will sign it?’
“And the answer is, it’s a lot of work,” she said. “It will take months because the last legislation we had was thirty years ago, when there was no abortion pill. So we’re starting from scratch.”