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Czarny Protest: how Polish women took to the streets

After two decades of feminist pressure, the people took to the streets. But why now?

By Kasia Narkowicz
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PA-28823020[1].jpg

Polish women protest against a legislative proposal for a total ban on abortion in Poland. PAimages/Geert Vanden Wijngaert. All rights reserved.

On Monday 3 October thousands of women in Poland got out of bed, had a shower, shared breakfast with their families, then selected a piece of black clothing from their wardrobe and took to the streets.

It was the Czarny Protest, a national day of strike against a proposal for a near-total ban on abortion that would criminalise women who terminated their pregnancies even in cases when they had been raped or when the foetus was severely damaged. The proposal, put forward by activist pro-life group PRO, uniting under a Stop Abortion slogan, is a further restriction on the already very stringent abortion law.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0