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Close to 100,000 protesters took to the streets of the Polish capital Warsaw on Friday in the largest demonstration of popular anger directed against the ruling right-wing Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party since it took office in 2015.
Protests have been held across the country since Poland’s constitutional court declared earlier this month that abortions in cases where a fetus is diagnosed with a serious and irreversible birth defect were unconstitutional. These procedures make up about 96% of legal abortions in Poland, which already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
On Wednesday, pro-choice activists called a “women’s strike” that drew more than 400,000 people to protests in more than 400 towns and cities across the Central European nation.
Just hours before Friday’s protest, Andrzej Duda, Poland’s right-wing president, announced what he described as a “legislative solution” to the political crisis, proposing that layoffs would be allowed in cases where birth defects are terminal. However, the termination of fetuses with conditions such as Down syndrome would be prohibited.
Strongly criticized by Poland’s medical and legal establishments, Duda’s intervention did little to quell the anger that has left the government and its de facto leader, PiS founder Jarosław Kaczyński, reeling.
On Friday, tens of thousands of protesters gathered at points throughout the city, chanting “I think, I feel, I decide” and anti-PiS slogans.
The protests, carried out as the government introduces increasingly stringent restrictions in response to the sharp rise in coronavirus infections and deaths in recent weeks, have been characterized by humorous slogans and posters and the involvement of Poles in their teens and early teens. 20’s.
But there were also violent incidents, as gangs of black-clad nationalists attacked protesters on the streets of central Warsaw. According to the Polish police, several of the detainees carried knives and batons.
Earlier this week, Kaczyński made a speech to the nation calling on his supporters to defend churches from protests, after services were disrupted and, in some cases, churches defaced during protests last weekend. Some have blamed the PiS leader for implicitly encouraging far-right groups to attack protesters.
On Friday night, having gathered in the center of Warsaw, tens of thousands of protesters marched north to the leafy suburb where Kaczyński lives, only to be blocked by hundreds of riot police.
“I just spoke with a young woman who told me that she is 24 years old and that she has done nothing in the last six days except protest,” Maja Wojcikowska, one of the protest organizers, told TVN station. “There is incredible energy, we are not going to waste it.”
