Post by pieter on Feb 4, 2017 9:01:27 GMT -7
This article may be old, but fact is that these demonstrations of Polish women with black flags continue to take place in Poland.
Back in black
Polish women skip work to protest against an abortion ban
A Catholic-backed bill puts the conservative government in a tough spot
Oct 4th 2016 | Europe
EDYTA, a project manager at a telecoms company, put on her black work outfit on October 3rd just as she would on any Monday morning, but she did not go to work. Instead she joined a crowd of an estimated 30,000 people, mainly women, on Warsaw’s Castle Square to demonstrate against a proposed tightening of Poland’s restrictions on abortion. The protest was part of a one-day women’s strike that brought black-clad female marchers into the streets in cities across the country. The so-called “black protest” was one of the most striking signs yet of resistance to the cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Poland since the installation last year of a government led by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Poland already has some of Europe’s toughest restrictions on abortion; indeed, Edyta first protested against the adoption of the current law in the early 1990s. (The existing law bans abortion except in cases of rape, severe congenital defects or a threat to the mother’s health. Some women obtain abortions illegally, others travel abroad.) The new draft law, proposed by anti-abortion organisations and backed by the Catholic church, would ban abortion except to save the mother’s life. The penalty for terminating a pregnancy illegally would be extended from two years in prison to five. Banning abortions in case of rape is particularly controversial; one archbishop tried to shrug it off with the medically ignorant suggestion that in such situations “the stress is so strong that fertilisation is less likely to occur.”
The tighter ban is widely unpopular; one recent poll found that just 14% of Poles support it. That creates a problem for PiS, which is not particularly committed to the measure but is loth to break step with the church and its conservative base. In April Jaroslaw Kaczynski, PiS’s leader and the dominant figure in the party, told his MPs they were free to vote according to their conscience on the bill. Yet on September 23rd every PiS deputy present voted to keep the proposed ban moving through parliament. Many also helped turn down a rival proposal to ease the existing restrictions. To the protesters who turned out on October 3rd, regardless of who first proposed the ban, it is the PiS that is at fault.
It is not just liberals who are outraged. Many Poles see the bill as a “great civilisational step backwards,” as one of the protesters put it. They included committed Catholics who disapprove of abortion; one said the bill has “nothing to do with faith”. Most simply want women to have a say. A televised discussion between politicians on abortion last weekend did not feature a single woman. “A woman is not an incubator,” read one placard at the protests.
Critics fear the conservatives will not stop at abortion. Since coming to power, PiS has scrapped state funding for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). A law that would restrict the procedure is in parliament now, as is another that would criminalise the morning-after pill. Anna and Marta, a young lesbian couple, attended the Warsaw protest with their baby son, conceived through artificial insemination. They would like to have more children, but “it may be harder with the next ones,” Marta worries. Protestors complain of Poland’s inadequate sex education programmes and the government’s failure to promote contraception.
The backlash against the proposed abortion ban has begun to show up in opinion polls. One survey this week gave PiS a 29% share of the electorate, still in first place but not far ahead of the liberal Nowoczesna party, which opposes the ban. (One female Nowoczesna MP called it “a law seemingly ripped from the Middle Ages”.) The centrist Civic Platform party opposes the ban too, though it favours the existing restrictions, which its leader recently proposed to enshrine in the constitution. The young female protesters at the abortion rallies are a worrying new problem for PiS. Earlier protests against PiS’s moves to pack the country’s constitutional court drew a predominantly older crowd.
The party seems unsure how to respond. One male senator clumsily called the protesting women “cannon fodder” being used by the opposition. Yet PiS is already showing signs of backing down. Its senators are expected to present a milder alternative version of the bill this week. Meanwhile, on October 5th the European Parliament will discuss the situation of Polish women, following European Union reviews earlier this year of the state of the rule of law in Poland. Before the “black protest”, Witold Waszczykowski, Poland’s foreign minister, seemed unconcerned: “Let them have fun,” he told one radio station. After this week’s demonstrations, he and his colleagues may be feeling less cocky.
Back in black
Polish women skip work to protest against an abortion ban
A Catholic-backed bill puts the conservative government in a tough spot
Oct 4th 2016 | Europe
EDYTA, a project manager at a telecoms company, put on her black work outfit on October 3rd just as she would on any Monday morning, but she did not go to work. Instead she joined a crowd of an estimated 30,000 people, mainly women, on Warsaw’s Castle Square to demonstrate against a proposed tightening of Poland’s restrictions on abortion. The protest was part of a one-day women’s strike that brought black-clad female marchers into the streets in cities across the country. The so-called “black protest” was one of the most striking signs yet of resistance to the cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Poland since the installation last year of a government led by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Poland already has some of Europe’s toughest restrictions on abortion; indeed, Edyta first protested against the adoption of the current law in the early 1990s. (The existing law bans abortion except in cases of rape, severe congenital defects or a threat to the mother’s health. Some women obtain abortions illegally, others travel abroad.) The new draft law, proposed by anti-abortion organisations and backed by the Catholic church, would ban abortion except to save the mother’s life. The penalty for terminating a pregnancy illegally would be extended from two years in prison to five. Banning abortions in case of rape is particularly controversial; one archbishop tried to shrug it off with the medically ignorant suggestion that in such situations “the stress is so strong that fertilisation is less likely to occur.”
The tighter ban is widely unpopular; one recent poll found that just 14% of Poles support it. That creates a problem for PiS, which is not particularly committed to the measure but is loth to break step with the church and its conservative base. In April Jaroslaw Kaczynski, PiS’s leader and the dominant figure in the party, told his MPs they were free to vote according to their conscience on the bill. Yet on September 23rd every PiS deputy present voted to keep the proposed ban moving through parliament. Many also helped turn down a rival proposal to ease the existing restrictions. To the protesters who turned out on October 3rd, regardless of who first proposed the ban, it is the PiS that is at fault.
It is not just liberals who are outraged. Many Poles see the bill as a “great civilisational step backwards,” as one of the protesters put it. They included committed Catholics who disapprove of abortion; one said the bill has “nothing to do with faith”. Most simply want women to have a say. A televised discussion between politicians on abortion last weekend did not feature a single woman. “A woman is not an incubator,” read one placard at the protests.
Critics fear the conservatives will not stop at abortion. Since coming to power, PiS has scrapped state funding for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). A law that would restrict the procedure is in parliament now, as is another that would criminalise the morning-after pill. Anna and Marta, a young lesbian couple, attended the Warsaw protest with their baby son, conceived through artificial insemination. They would like to have more children, but “it may be harder with the next ones,” Marta worries. Protestors complain of Poland’s inadequate sex education programmes and the government’s failure to promote contraception.
The backlash against the proposed abortion ban has begun to show up in opinion polls. One survey this week gave PiS a 29% share of the electorate, still in first place but not far ahead of the liberal Nowoczesna party, which opposes the ban. (One female Nowoczesna MP called it “a law seemingly ripped from the Middle Ages”.) The centrist Civic Platform party opposes the ban too, though it favours the existing restrictions, which its leader recently proposed to enshrine in the constitution. The young female protesters at the abortion rallies are a worrying new problem for PiS. Earlier protests against PiS’s moves to pack the country’s constitutional court drew a predominantly older crowd.
The party seems unsure how to respond. One male senator clumsily called the protesting women “cannon fodder” being used by the opposition. Yet PiS is already showing signs of backing down. Its senators are expected to present a milder alternative version of the bill this week. Meanwhile, on October 5th the European Parliament will discuss the situation of Polish women, following European Union reviews earlier this year of the state of the rule of law in Poland. Before the “black protest”, Witold Waszczykowski, Poland’s foreign minister, seemed unconcerned: “Let them have fun,” he told one radio station. After this week’s demonstrations, he and his colleagues may be feeling less cocky.
