Polish women have gathered in cities across the country to protest against a proposal to ban abortions in cases where foetuses are badly damaged or have no chance of survival after birth.
Many wore black, a symbol of mourning for the feared loss of reproductive rights, as they took to the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań and other cities and towns across the predominantly Roman Catholic nation of 38 million.
“Girls just want to have fundamental rights,” one banner proclaimed.
The protests on Monday follow a similar round of street demonstrations in early October, a reaction to a proposal for an even more restrictive law which would have banned abortion in all cases, including rape, and imposed prison sentences of up to five years on women and doctors involved in terminating pregnancies.
Massive so-called “black protests” forced lawmakers to abandon that proposal.
The women, joined by many men, have returned to the streets in response to a new proposal by Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of the ruling Law and Justice party. Earlier this month, he said his party wants to ensure that even pregnancies involving a child “certain to die, very deformed, still end up in a birth, so that the child can be baptised, buried, have a name”.
In the weeks since the first round of protests, the grassroots movement advocating abortion rights has increased its demands. Those who turned out on Monday also called for better sex education and easier access to birth control while also demanding that the influential Roman Catholic church end its “interference” in political life and public education.
Clashes broke out between abortion rights supporters and anti-abortion activists outside a metro station in central Warsaw where demands were laid out in a petition that a steady stream of people lined up to sign.
“We want to live in a secular society,” said Agata Rybka, a 24-year-old student of biotechnology at Warsaw University who had volunteered to oversee the petition signing. “Right now religious issues dominate public discourse and we don’t like it.”
Poland already has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations only allowed in cases of rape, when the foetus is irreparably damaged and when the woman’s life or health is in peril.
The new proposal would not amount to a total ban, and would still allow abortion in cases of rape or if the woman’s life or health is in danger.
Dorota Szumilak, a 44-year-old financial analyst, signed the petition, explaining that she did so because she saw in the abortion ban proposal an attempt to restrict women’s rights more broadly. A Lutheran, she said she feels discriminated against in a society where the Catholic church runs religion classes in the schools and is now supporting further restrictions on abortion.
“The role of the church is now too strong,” she said.
She was with a friend, Małgorzata Brendel, 53, who said the attempts to tighten the abortion law had prompted her to become one of a growing number of Poles who are now formally leaving the Catholic church.
