A proposed total abortion ban in Poland will not be implemented, a member of the government has said on Wednesday, describing mass protests against the ban on Monday as a lesson in humility for the country’s leadership. The proposed total abortion ban would have outlawed the practice even in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk
Tens of thousands of women are expected to go on strike across Poland in protest against a new law that would effectively ban abortion.
Poland already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations legally permitted only when the life of the foetus is under threat, when there is a grave threat to the health of the mother, and in the instance that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.
Were the proposed ban to be enacted, all terminations would be criminalised, 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 would mean that even a woman who suffers a miscarriage could be under criminal suspicion, and that doctors might be put off conducting even routine procedures on pregnant women for fear of being accused of facilitating a termination.
Although a ban has received public support from elements of 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.
When on 23 September the Polish parliament voted for Stop Abortion’s proposals to be scrutinised by a parliamentary committee, pro-choice activists responded by calling a nationwide strike, or “national absence campaign”, by women, encouraging them 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 co-ordinator. “This is a chance for us to be seen, and to be heard.”
The 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.
Organisers cite an assault on women’s reproductive rights that goes beyond the measures contained in Stop Abortion’s proposed ban. A separate, PiS-sponsored bill restricting IVF (in vitro fertilisation), 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.
The Polish Federation of Pro-Life Movements, with the support of an MP from a rightwing parliamentary faction associated with Law and Justice, has called for a total ban of the morning-after pill. Under the proposals, anyone caught selling or distributing emergency contraception could be imprisoned for up to two years.
But it is the perceived cruelty of the proposed abortion ban that has united what has long been a relatively marginal feminist movement with many self-identified Roman Catholics who support the existing “compromise” – shorthand for the legislation passed in 1993 that regulates abortion to this day.
“One thing that I think really radicalised women is when they understood that this could lead to incarceration for women who had miscarriages,” says Agnieszka Graff, a commentator, activist, and author of World without Women: Gender in Polish Public Life.
According to a poll for Newsweek Polska, 74% of Poles support the retention of the existing legislation, while research by polling company Ipsos indicates 50% of Poles support the strike, with 15% saying they would like to take part. A further 15% expressed opposition.
“My mother is very Catholic, goes to church every Sunday, and is against abortion just because you might not want the child,” says Malgorzata Lodyga, a junior doctor who supports the strike. “But she is against this law, because if a woman is raped, she will be treated worse than the man who raped her.”
The intensity of the so-called “black protests” has proved tricky for Law and Justice, 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, Jaroslaw Kaczyński, has suggested that the government might accept a compromise whereby terminations carried out because of a congenital disorder of the foetus would be banned, but terminations of pregnancies as a result of rape or incest would still be permitted.
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In my desk drawer, I have the signatures of 1,500 Polish women who support liberalising our country’s abortion law, which bans the procedure except in cases of rape, incest, foetal anomalies, or when the pregnant woman’s life is in danger. The signatures arrived too late – the day after our petition to support a more liberal law was due to be delivered to the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, but I won’t throw them out. I know what they represent – the growing solidarity among Polish women (and many men) in the struggle for our reproductive rights, a struggle once left to feminist groups working at society’s margins.
No longer. On Wednesday our fight will come up against another draft law – the “Stop Abortion” law – which has been put forward by the ruling Law and Justice party. Supported by the Catholic church, it would ban abortion in all circumstances except to protect the life of the pregnant woman.
Related: Thousands protest against proposed stricter abortion law in Poland
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Poland is the second greatest producer of tobacco in the EU. Photograph: Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Photos
Poland is to appeal to the European court of justice above an EU ban on flavoured tobacco products, saying it will be unfairly affected.
The ban is a component of EU-wide anti-smoking legislation, due to be implemented in 2016, which also consists of tougher rules on packaging and advertising and marketing.
The appeal is becoming manufactured in spite of help for the ban from the country’s health minister, Bartosz Arłukowicz. However, financial arguments prevailed, with Janusz Piechocinski, the deputy prime minister, saying menthol-flavoured cigarettes should be considered a conventional merchandise, like the Swedish snus – powdered tobacco positioned under the lip – and be exempt from the directive.
In accordance to the World Lung Basis, Poland is a single of the EU’s biggest buyers of cigarettes, with yearly consumption of 1,586 per capita, twice the degree in Britain.
Practically 1 in 5 cigarettes sold is menthol-flavoured, in contrast with 1 in 10 in Sweden and significantly less than one particular in a hundred in Spain, Austria and Slovakia.
“Menthol cigarettes were introduced to Poland in 1953 and Polish smokers have designed a unique taste for them,” said Magdalena Włodarczyk, representing British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco Worldwide, which together have a 99% share of the Polish market. “There is no purpose why they need to get hit so tough more than this.”
Poland is also the 2nd biggest producer of tobacco in the EU, with Polish tobacco farms using a lot more than 60,000 people. It is the seventh biggest producer of cigarettes in the planet, with five processing internet sites and six factories.
Lech Ostrowski, head of the National Union of Tobacco Farmers, representing seven,000 producers, mentioned burley, the tobacco utilised in the manufacturing of menthol cigarettes simply because of its flavour-absorbing properties, accounted for nearly 40% of Poland’s production.
“We can’t all switch to expanding Virginia, since the market will simply not accommodate it and rates will fall,” he stated.
A report commissioned by Poland’s tobacco market explained the new legislation would ruin 30,000 jobs in production, manufacturing and distribution. It would price the nation up to 9bn zloty (£1.75bn) in misplaced tax income every yr, simply because menthol smokers would swap to cigarettes smuggled in from Belarus and Ukraine.
BBC’s Panorama programme is to make allegations about GSK’s behaviour in Poland. Photograph: BBC
GlaxoSmithKline has been accused of bribing doctors to prescribe its medicines in Europe.
The Uk-primarily based drug firm, which has faced claims of corruption in China and Iraq, has been accused above its alleged behaviour in Poland.
A former income representative for the business informed the BBC’s Panorama programme, which airs on Monday evening, that reps paid medical doctors to boost prescriptions there.
Jarek Wisniewiski stated that in 2010 he worked on a advertising programme across Poland to push its asthma drug Seretide.
On paper, funds was to be spent on educating patients about asthma. The reality, even though, he mentioned, was that they paid doctors to prescribe a lot more Seretide.
He informed Panorama: “I spend for training and in the exact same meeting I explained that I require far more prescriptions for Seretide. So … they knew precisely for what I pay.”
An additional former GSK drug rep, who did not want to be identified, mentioned they paid physicians for lectures that by no means happened and this would end result in a greater variety of prescriptions.
Wisniewiski said: “We pay out agreement for a speech, we pay £100 but we expect much more than 100 prescriptions for this drug.”
He explained his regional manager advised them to do it, and that he advised GSK he was unhappy with the arrangement but this resulted in him getting sidelined at operate and sooner or later sacked.
The programme explained a criminal investigation was beneath way, and 11 doctors and a single GSK regional manager had been charged in connection with corruption.
If the new allegations are successfully prosecuted, then GSK may have violated the two the UK’s Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the programme mentioned. In each countries it is unlawful for firms based there to bribe government employees abroad.
GSK informed Panorama that it ran a programme in Poland from 2010 to 2012 to assist increase diagnostic requirements and healthcare training for the advantage of patients with respiratory ailment.
It said: “[Some] sessions have been delivered by expert healthcare pros who, based on contracts signed with GSK, received payments proper to the scope of perform as effectively as their level of information and encounter. The provision of sessions under this programme was agreed with the Polish healthcare centres.
“Following receipt of allegations relating to the conduct of the programme in the Lodz region, GSK has investigated the matter, using assets from the two within and outside the organization. The investigation located evidence of inappropriate communication in contravention of GSK policy by a single worker. The employee concerned was reprimanded and disciplined as a result.
“We proceed to investigate these issues and are co-working fully with the CBA [Central Anti-corruption Bureau].”
The company also said: “There is a require to modernise interactions in between the pharmaceutical sector and healthcare professionals to ensure patients’ interests are constantly place first and to remove even a perception of a conflict of curiosity.
“This is why we have made, and will carry on to make, fundamental alterations to our enterprise, this kind of as opening up entry to our clinical trial data, changing how we shell out our sales representatives and stopping payments to healthcare pros for speaking engagements and for attendance at healthcare conferences.”
