Women wearing black clothes and waving black flags are demonstrating across Poland, boycotting their jobs and classes as part of a nationwide strike in protest against a new law that would in effect ban abortion.
Many men also took part in demonstrations on the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk and elsewhere across the largely Catholic nation.
Thousands of people protested on Saturday in front of the parliament in Warsaw. Women were wearing black in a sign of mourning for the feared loss of reproductive rights; they have also warned that some women will die if the proposal passes as it stands now.
Poland already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations legally permitted only when there is severe foetal abnormality, when there is a grave threat to the health of the mother, or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.
But the new law would criminalise all terminations, with women punishable with up to five years in prison. Doctors found to have assisted with a termination would also be liable for prosecution and a prison term.
Critics say that even a woman who suffers a miscarriage could be under criminal suspicion, and that doctors might be put off conducting routine procedures on pregnant women for fear of being accused of facilitating a termination.
Although a ban has received public support from elements within the Catholic church and Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), neither initiated the proposals. They were drafted by hardline conservative advocacy group Ordo Iuris and submitted by the Stop Abortion coalition as a “citizens’ initiative” – a petition considered by parliament once it has received more than 100,000 signatures.
While it was difficult to gauge strike participation in small towns and rural areas, which tend to be more conservative, participation in the cities appeared to be significant on Monday morning.
A large crowd gathered in central Warsaw and people were also out on the streets in other cities.
The private news broadcaster TVN24, with some of its own presenters in black, showed images of establishments joining the strike, including a restaurant in Wrocław that closed to let female employees participate and a museum in Krakow where none of the women showed up to work.
In Częstochowa, perhaps the most Catholic city in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation, the city hall reported that 60% of female workers had not turned up to work.
Pro-choice activists called for the strike, or “national absence campaign”, after the Polish parliament voted on 23 September for Stop Abortion’s proposals to be scrutinised by a parliamentary committee. Women were encouraged to take a day off work and domestic tasks and gather for meetings or demonstrations, to donate blood or do charity work.
Many Polish women say they are sick of deals being cut over their fundamental reproductive and human rights, which they argue threaten both their safety and their dignity.
“A lot of women and girls in this country have felt that they don’t have any power, that they are not equal, that they don’t have the right to an opinion,” said Magda Staroszczyk, a strike coordinator, over the weekend. “This is a chance for us to be seen, and to be heard.”
Organisers cite an assault on women’s reproductive rights that goes beyond Stop Abortion’s proposed ban. A separate, PiS-sponsored bill restricting IVF, which would make it illegal to freeze embryos and allow women to fertilise only one embryo at a time, was also passed to the parliamentary committee stage in September.
Monday’s protest was inspired by an all-out strike more than 40 years ago by the women of Iceland, when 90% of women refused to work, cook, or look after their children for a day in October 1975.
The intensity of the so-called “black protests” has proved tricky for PiS, which presents itself as the guardian of traditional values in a country beset by liberal notions of multiculturalism, relaxed social mores and restrictive political correctness, but which remains mindful of the risks of alienating mainstream public opinion.
The party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, has suggested that the government might accept a compromise whereby terminations carried out because of foetal abnormalities would be banned, but terminations of pregnancies as a result of rape or incest would still be permitted.
Associated Press contributed to this report
Polish women strike over planned abortion ban
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