what exactly is going on in Poland right now
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when the Polish Constitutional Tribunal proclaimed abortion illegal in the case of a fetus with a defect and/or one which is potentially dead. Perhaps there is some truth to the statement that the people should have seen it coming for years. And the same thing could be said about the fact that today, on a peaceful Wednesday on January 27th, the ruling was officially published, making it the letter of the law.
So, what does this mean, exactly? Well, for one it makes abortion virtually illegal. The only instances in which a fetus can be legally removed are as follows: (a) legal proof of rape or incest and (b) endangerment of the life of the person carrying the fetus.
In reality, the numbers speak for themselves: while about a thousand abortions used to be performed every year in Poland, roughly 40 of them will now be legal (for example, the data from 2019 says that out of the 1110 operations performed that year, 1074 would be illegal as of today). Rape is undeniably almost impossible to prove in court, not to mention even getting a ruling within the first few months (realistically such cases take years and are almost never ruled in favor of the victim). Abortion therefore isn’t fully illegal, but almost unreachable for anybody (even if their health is at risk, an example of which might be the case of Alicja Tysiąc who wanted to perform an abortion because of her health and was denied that right, later on fully losing her eyesight upon being forced to give birth).
The previous law did not allow choice in the case of a healthy fetus & a healthy mother, making it one of the strictest law systems in this regard in Europe, but what it did is it offered a way out for people who were carrying a fetus that was dead or ill. So what happened? In short: the Constitutional Tribunal happened.
What the Tribunal is supposed to be is a body meant to guard the constitution from the potential laws imposed by the ruling parties. The politicization of the Tribunal is widely regarded to have made it into the exact opposite of that: it seems like an institution almost openly repurposed to solidify conservative and right wing reform drafted by the ruling party (Law and Justice). With its politics leaning heavily into the positions taken by the Catholic Church, the ban had already been attempted multiple times in the past. The justices put into the positions of power at the Tribunal voted on the abortion ban on October 22nd but they had yet to publish the ruling.
Meanwhile, people took to the streets. Tens of thousands marched for weeks, with the red lightning as their symbol, screaming about the many injustices the ruling party and the Polish Catholic Church have committed. The many instances of police brutality did not scare people away as they formed what is estimated to be the biggest street protests in the history of the country. The anti choice lobbyists celebrated but the overwhelming majority of the country disagreed with the Tribunal’s ruling (according to some polls as much as 75% of Poles wish to re-institute the old abortion “compromise” which consisted in the right to remove a fetus with defects, and when surveying among people aged 18-29, that percentage rose all the way up to 96%).
That being said, the social unrest started making people question the previous “compromise”, and there was a public debate about perhaps even fighting for a full pro choice option, allowing Poles to perform abortion surgeries as freely as the people from other European countries have done for the past decades. The ruling party backed down for a while, hesitant to publish the official law, waiting all the way to the last moment.
Today marks the day when abortion, in practice, becomes illegal in Poland. The publishing of the ruling was sudden, quiet, unannounced in hopes of reducing the public outrage. Performing an abortion has become a luxury for the people who can afford leaving the country and paying for a surgery at a private clinic somewhere abroad. That is virtually impossible for the members of the working class. Groups that are also especially vulnerable are LGBTQ+ people and people from rural areas who often find no financial or emotional support in their local communities and family members.
And so it goes. Many of us are taking to the streets again. Big cities outside of Poland will also be hosting protests in solidarity with the people in Poland. I decided against posting any direct links to the events but you can easily find them on social media, they usually gather around Polish embassies. You can also consider donating a couple of bucks to the Abortion Dream Team (an organization helping Polish people with financing abortions in foreign countries and/or help in covering the travel expanses) or to the Women’s Strike (an organization which organizes the protests).
If you want to learn more & see more of the protests in November and December, here are some mainstream videos in English you can watch: (x) (x) (x) (x)
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