WARSAW, Poland – Some carried posters with the caption “I’m afraid to live here.” Others sang Aretha Franklin’s “Think.” But everyone was determined to express their outrage over Poland’s almost total ban on abortions.
For the third consecutive night, thousands took to the streets of the capital of Poland, Warsaw, and other cities across the country to protest against a ruling on abortion in the Constitutional Tribunal.
The ruling, which became law on Wednesday, makes the termination of pregnancies with fetal defects unconstitutional and eliminates the most legitimate reason for abortion in the Eastern European country.
Demonstrations, led by the rights group Women’s Strike, erupted almost immediately after it took effect.
Among the protesters was Ola Bakowska, 31, who told NBC News by telephone on Saturday that she had taken to the streets on Wednesday to “evoke her emotions” and show “my difference of opinion” with the new law.
She added that she was encouraged by the number of people who pointed to all the protests.
While abortion was the main focus, climate change activists and members of the LGBTQ communities were among those taking to the streets amid fears of wider erosion of civil liberties.
Among them Marek Elas, 36, an environmental activist working with the World Wide Fund for Nature in Poland, said on Thursday that the Polish government was “working to limit human rights”.
He added that the “government thought women were the easiest to beat, which turned out to be untrue.”
Bakowska, a project manager, agrees that many of the protesters want to express their broader anger over the government, which she says is “targeting many people’s rights, not just women’s rights”, with its ‘traditional but outdated values’.
The LGBTQ communities were among the suffering, she said. “It’s as if they are invisible,” she added.
Poland’s ruling party for law and justice, also known as PiS, promises to return to more conservative social norms before coming to power in 2015. Abortion has since become a very divisive issue in the predominantly Catholic country.
It supports the ruling of the Abortion Act in October, which was also followed by nationwide protests.
Under the new rules, abortion can only be performed in the event of rape or incest or when the mother’s health or life is in danger, which puts Poland outside the European mainstream. Doctors who disregard the law can be jailed.
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Krzysztof Sobolewski, a senior PiS official, told the PAP news agency on Saturday that the protests were illegal and that the rules regarding social distance had been defied to curb the coronavirus pandemic since 14 were arrested on Friday.
Lawyer Eliza Rutynowska told NBC News on Friday that some protesters had been detained in police stations up to 25 km outside the city. NBC News could not independently verify this.
Many of her clients, for whom she has acted on a pro-bono basis, have told her that they are angry “about how contemptuous human rights are in Poland today,” she said.
“Poland seems to be moving to the right, but on the inside we are seeing a strong move towards freedom,” she added. “It’s essentially a struggle for our rights and our lives.”
Reproductive and human rights groups have condemned the restrictive law on abortions and warned of a broader erosion of civil liberties and miscarriage of justice by the government.
“This step is a blatant violation of the basic duty of authorities to protect the lives and health of their citizens,” said Irene Donadio of the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network.
But for Beata Jedynak, 60, who supports the government, it felt “crushing and disgusting” to watch the protests, “she told NBC News.
“I just do not know what this struggle is about, whether I overthrow the government or to take completely left-wing views,” she said.
But Bakowska said they were “not giving up”, adding: “We will continue to protest.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
