The Polish parliament (Sejm) is preparing to vote on a law that could result in severe abortion rights restrictions. As of today, Polish women may not be able to abort in the case of severe fetal deformities. Despite confinement and restrictions, protests are taking over the streets and the internet.
To put it lightly, the Polish government sure seems to have a sharp sense of opportunity. While confinement measures forbid gatherings of more than two people, this Wednesday, the Polish parliament is set to vote on what could become the most restrictive abortion ban in Europe.
A similar move was attempted by the PiS (Poland’s ultra-convervative party) at its arrival in power, back in 2015. It was thanks to the pressure generated by massive street protests (Czarny protests) that the project never got to see the light of day.
Funnily enough, massive street protests shouldn’t be a problem for them this time around, amidst what has become the most extraordinary sanitary crisis the world has faced in years. It was during the confinement caused by this critical situation that the Ordo Iuris Institute, an ultra-Catholic Polish institution for judiciary culture, wrote up a project law attempting to restrict abortion rights. Considering that Poland’s abortion law already accounts for one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, as it resulted from a State and Church compromise in 1993, an increase on such restrictions could be devastating for women nationwide.
At the moment, you can only resort to abortion in one of three cases:
1) if the pregnancy results from rape or incest
2) If the pregnancy is life-threatening for the mother
3) If the foetus presents irreversible damage and deformities.
It is the latter that PiS is striving to ban; despite over 95% of abortions practiced in Poland each year being due to this same situation.
The law also suggests that women who abort and doctors who perform abortion are to be legally punished, risking up to five years in prison for a procedure that many consider to be an integral woman’s right.
If the law is to be adopted in parliament, President Andrzej Duda already established he shall not enable his right to veto. In an interview with Catholic magazine Niedziela in early April, he stated; “I am firmly against eugenic abortion and believe that killing disabled children is simply murder. If a law on this subject were to arrive on my desk, I would certainly promulgate it.”
So now, on the eve of such a crucial judgement that will impact the lives of women across the country, you will not find massive protests flooding the streets of Warsaw, or people picketing outside of Parliament’s doors. However, what you will find in its place are massive traffic jams, as people take to protesting on their cars in an attempt to have their voices heard whilst maintaining strict social distancing policies. Alongside this, the massive wave of objection and outcry witnessed across social media platforms is clear evidence that even in these unprecedented times of turmoil, the voices of people, more specifically, the voices of women, cannot and must not be drowned out.
The appearance of one crisis does not allow for the arrival of another. So it is now, in times of threat, that we must work together to stand up to those who wish to push women’s rights down, to demand equality not just in our own countries, but on a global scale, and to ensure that the voices of those in Poland do not fall silent against the noise of the world.
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