[ad_1]
Tens of thousands of people protest in Warsaw against a Constitutional Court ruling on the regulation of abortion. The protesters, including several prominent politicians from opposition parties, gathered in Warsaw at three different points in the city center. The marches later led to the Zoliborz district in Warsaw, where the home of Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski is located. Not far from there, they were stopped by police cordons.
The crowd is demanding the repeal of the law restricting abortion and the replacement of the government. The participants clashed with protesters in some places, with the fighting groups separated by the police.
The result is linked to the wave of protests that broke out in recent days.
President Andrzej Duda presented a newer and softer version of the law to Parliament today that would allow abortion if the fetus is likely to suffer life-threatening harm, but protect children with Down syndrome from abortion.
Andrzej Duda stressed that extraordinary situations in life must be taken into account.
Warsaw’s opposition mayor Rafal Trzaskowski expressed his support for the protesters in a video message recorded at the protest. At the initiative of the Warsaw mayor’s office, the symbol of the current protests, the red ray, was projected on the facade of the Palace of Culture, which was considered one of the symbols of the capital and was built under Stalin.
Traffic crossings were blocked and traffic was paralyzed in several Polish cities.
In Poland, thousands of people, mostly women, have been marching through the streets of big cities every Tuesday since they protested against a Constitutional Court decision declaring unconstitutional a clause in the abortion law that allows the abortion of fetuses. suffering from incurable diseases.
The law, in force since Tuesday, allowed to reject fetuses under 12 weeks if the pregnancy was the result of rape and without a time limit if the mother’s life was in danger or the fetus was incurable. Of the 1,100 abortions performed legally in 2019, 1,074 were performed due to a fetal disorder.
In announcing Tuesday’s decision, Julia Przyłębska, president of the Constitutional Court, argued against the rejection of incurable sick fetuses that the basic law guarantees the right to life and that the “eugenic practice” of abortion is simply a form of direct discrimination. prohibited. In Poland, doctors have the right to refuse to carry out an abortion on grounds of conscience, and even to prescribe contraceptive pills.
Politics has already taken a small step back
The issue of the abortion law was brought before the Constitutional Court by representatives of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) after it emerged that the party did not have a sufficient parliamentary majority to change the law. One reason for their timing may be that there is no meaningful political measurement on the horizon (municipal elections were held in 2018, parliamentary elections in 2019, and presidential elections in 2020), and another is that it helps to divert attention from authorities. Polish. Control of the spread of the coronavirus epidemic begins to wane.
The latter is characterized by a record number of new infections identified in 24 hours on Friday with 21,629 cases, and a death toll of 301 deaths on Thursday. Attorney General Bogdan Święczkowski, the AP news agency writes, also hastily indicated that as the coronavirus was apparently more prevalent in protests, he would initiate criminal proceedings against the organizers of the protests on charges of “causing an epidemic threat.” Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek, meanwhile, has threatened to withdraw state support for the universities that defend the protesters.
Outrage over the Constitutional Court’s decision is also reflected in PiS’s loss of popularity, with support for the Polish ruling party falling to 26 percent in five years, according to a poll commissioned by Kantar on behalf of Gazeta Wyborcza. According to him, party chair Jarosław Kaczyński and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki are just two percent ahead of the right-wing party coalition called the Civic Coalition (KO), and the third is the recently founded movement of journalist Szymon Hołownia, Poland with 2050 (Polska 2050) in third place.
The poll also makes it clear that Poles only disagree with excessive restrictions. While 11 percent want a total abortion ban and 22 percent would repeal all regulations, 62 percent said they would only allow abortion in certain cases.
63% of those surveyed support abortion when the life or health of the mother is at stake, 59% when the fetus suffers from an incurable disease or deformity and 54% when the cause of the pregnancy is rape.
And politics seems to be starting to recede as well, with the head of state Andrzej Duda vowing, at least on Friday, to introduce a bill that would still allow the rejection of (if not incurable, but) deadly fetuses.
After the decision of the Constitutional Court, what would have been unthinkable a week ago also happened in deeply religious Poland, namely that anger reached the churches. Protesters have disrupted masses, attacked priests, damaged several church buildings or scribbled with graffiti because the Catholic Church has long been an advocate for a total ban on abortion. In one of the Warsaw suburbs, Jezorna Konstancin, the late Catholic Archbishop, II. Statue of Juan Pablo.
Then, after President Jarosław Kaczyński called on his followers to protect churches, groups armed with sticks and stones attacked protesters in Wrocław.
(Cover image: Getty Images Hungary Photographer: Pacific Press)
[ad_2]
