POLAND: Abortion rights erased
The government of Poland used the pandemic as a cover to attack women’s rights, reintroducing bills to restrict access to abortion and sex education. The two bills had met with huge opposition and nationwide protests when they were first proposed in 2018 and 2019 by conservative groups close to the ruling party. The ‘Stop Abortion’ bill sought to tighten Poland’s abortion laws, already amongst Europe’s strictest, to prohibit terminations even in cases of severe or fatal foetal anomaly, while the ‘Stop Paedophilia’ bill aimed to criminalise those who educate young people about sexual and reproductive health.
The amendments to abortion laws during the pandemic came about through a civic project submitted by a fundamentalist organisation. We organised protests, which was a slightly crazy thing to do, because how do you protest during a pandemic when you are not allowed to gather? That is why we got creative: we invented new forms of protest because we had to.
Klementyna Suchanow
