Poland Beholds The Second Night Of Protests For A Near-Total Abortion Ban
Image Credit – Times Of India
Poland has become a tinderbox as a near-total ban on abortion has become effective. It has instigated a new wave of countrywide protests that started three months ago. The protesters are pleading and raging after the constitutional court ruled that the abortion of inherently damaged fetuses is unconstitutional.
The protests have been led by a women’s rights group, Women’s Strike and people have gathered on the streets of Warsaw. The dissidents are not giving up as they protested in front of the court and in other cities to demonstrate their issues on Thursday for the second evening in a row.
In Warsaw, the riot created disorder on the road, making the atmosphere tensed. The police have captured three people who they said “had invaded the territory of the Constitutional Tribunal.”
Though, the Women’s Strike referred that five people among the group of riots were detained. The police detained one of the leaders of the movement, Klementyna Suchanow.
The protesters pitch for the right of women; they are campaigning because they believe women should have the fundamental right to decide what to do with their bodies. One banner in Rzeszow stated that an “abortion ban is discrimination against the poorest,” because poor women cannot afford to go abroad for abortions, as Polish women have been doing for many years.
“I wanted to have more children; you killed this desire,” read a banner held by one woman among the demonstrators in Warsaw.
Some Polish women have come forward with the statement that if they lose the right to have an abortion for pregnancies in cases of serious fetal deformities, they will stop wanting to have children in the future at all.
Poland’s top human rights official denounced the further restriction of what was already one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, calling it a tragedy for women.
“The state wants to further limit their rights, risk their lives and condemn them to torture,” said Adam Bodnar, the human rights commissioner, or ombudsman, whose role is independent of the Polish government. “This offensive is opposed by civil society.”
Polish women can only have the right to terminate the fetuses under Polish law only if the woman’s life or health is at risk, or if a pregnancy results from a crime like rape or incest. Till now, about 98 percent of all legal abortions in the country were done under the circumstances of fetal malformations. There were 1,110 abortion cases in 2019.
Poland’s constitutional court on Wednesday issued a justification of a controversial October ruling that bans abortions in cases of fetuses with congenital defects, even ones so severe that there is no chance of survival upon birth.
The government issued the court’s decision in a government journal. Those steps were the formal prerequisites required for the new law to enter into force.
Many hospitals had to cancel clinical abortion procedures that were legal until Wednesday.
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