I co-founded the Polish Women’s Strike, which led a series of anti-government demonstrations following the almost-total outlawing of abortion in 2020. I have spent six years of my life protesting attempts to restrict women’s access to it and to defend democracy. That’s why nothing surprises me about the Roe v Wade situation in the United States. In fact, there is a clear similarity: public opinion says one thing, while a group of zealots forces an entire nation to do the opposite.
Poland has had restrictive laws in place since 1993, with abortion only legally available in cases of rape and incest, threat to the mother’s life, or severe foetal abnormality. After an unsuccessful attempt to further restrict abortion in the Polish Sejm (the lower house of the country’s parliament) in October 2016, a law banning the abortion of non-viable foetuses finally came into force on 22 October 2020. It was imposed by the Constitutional Tribunal, an institution whose independence and legality is itself in question. The new law means that women are now forced to carry their pregnancy to term and give birth to a dead foetus.
The first attempt to introduce further restrictions to abortion in 2016 triggered a widespread mass mobilisation of women, which became the Polish Women’s Strike. The second, in 2020, triggered demonstrations of enormous proportions. In the whole history of Poland – including the Solidarność era – the authorities had never faced such a degree of mass opposition. Even some 27% of supporters of the populist, right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) opposed the new law.
