On Friday, March 8, the Women’s Strike organized a demonstration in front of the Presidential Palace. “We demand that emergency contraception be available without a prescription for anyone and everyone from the age of 15! We demand that the draft abortion laws be considered! This is a matter of our basic rights, our life and death!” – we read in the announcement of the demonstration.
The demonstration started at 6 p.m. A Women’s Strike car appeared on Krakowskie Przedmieście.
Women’s demonstration in front of the Presidential Palace TVN24
The participants of the meeting will then pass in front of the building of the Polish 2050 parliamentary office at Konopnicka Street.
“We are taking to the streets for the law on the available ‘morning-after’ pill and for the processing of pro-abortion laws. After the bill on the ‘morning-after’ pill was adopted in the Sejm on the evening of the same day (February 22), Andrzej Duda announced that he would veto it. If so , let’s remind him that we caused the fall of the PiS government,” we read in the announcement of the event.
The Women’s Strike also turned to the Speaker of the Sejm: “We are also coming to you, Speaker Szymon Hołownia, who announced the proceedings of pro-abortion laws during the current session of the Sejm and canceled it at the last minute.”
Abortion-related projects discussed next month
Marshal of the Sejm Szymon Hołownia announced on Tuesday that abortion projects will be discussed “just after the first round of local government elections”, i.e. in over a month – on April 11. In his opinion, it is better to wait with such a debate until the end of the “very hot election campaign” to avoid a situation in which the projects “will be rejected as part of this pre-election barrage at first reading.” MPs from the Left protested against this decision on Wednesday.
Last November, the Left submitted two projects on the liberalization of abortion regulations. One of them partially decriminalizes abortion and assistance in it, the other allows termination of pregnancy until the end of the 12th week of its duration.
At the end of January, the Sejm received a bill from a group of deputies from the Civic Coalition parliamentary club. It assumes that a pregnant person has the right to health services in the form of termination of pregnancy during the first 12 weeks of its duration.
In addition to these projects, at the end of February, Trzecia Droga (PSL and Polska 2050) submitted a bill to the Sejm that reverses the Constitutional Tribunal’s judgment of 2020 on abortion regulations. TD politicians also announced a proposal for a referendum on abortion.
Abortion law in Poland
The anti-abortion regulations in force in Poland since 1993 were changed after the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal in October 2020. Previously, the Act on Family Planning, Protection of the Human Fetus and Conditions of Permissibility of Termination of Pregnancy, known as the Abortion Compromise, allowed abortion also in the event of severe and irreversible impairment of the fetus or an incurable disease that threatened its life. The Constitutional Tribunal found this ground for termination of pregnancy to be unconstitutional, which caused a wave of protests throughout the country. This provision expired with the publication of the Court’s ruling in January 2021.
Main photo source: TVN24