{"id":38064,"date":"2020-10-28T08:20:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T08:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=38064"},"modified":"2020-10-28T08:20:06","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T08:20:06","slug":"poland-has-tightened-its-abortion-laws-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/poland-has-tightened-its-abortion-laws-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Poland has tightened its abortion laws\u2026 again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A ruling forbidding almost all abortions has triggered an uproar from protesters across the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Thursday, a landmark decree passed in a Polish tribunal that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-54642108\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">foetal abnormality abortions are now unconstitutional<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Julia Przylebska, the tribunal president, <a href=\"https:\/\/kaleistyleguide.com\/women\/life\/abortion-has-effectively-banned-poland-britain-isnt-safe-either\/\">said<\/a> that abortions of this nature would legalise: \u201ceugenic practices with regard to an unborn child, thus denying it the respect and protection of human dignity\u2026 [Terminating these pregnancies is] a directly forbidden form of discrimination.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2019, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/1111313\/poland-number-of-legal-abortions-1994-2018\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1,074 out of 1,110 legal abortions were foetal abortions<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, with estimations that about 8,000-12,000 women travelled outside the country to have these procedures. With this legislation as an expansion pack to its existing ultra-strict policies, abortion will now only be legal in some cases of rape, incest or if the mother is at risk of death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Moreover, a pandemic that restricts travel (leaving Polish women stranded with an oppressive administration) was the extra push needed for floods of protesters to storm the streets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Poland: Thousands protest against country&#039;s new abortion laws in Warsaw for second night running\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BQvYUblUBv4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thousands and thousands of people are screaming slews of anti-government chants and blocking the main roads and bridges. The group responsible for these actions, the Women\u2019s Strike, has coordinated protests in more than 150 cities with sister protests around Europe. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Watch as protesters rally outside the Polish embassy in London on Monday chanting and emotionally decrying the Polish government.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=G0PS_egqG-g&#038;ab_channel=Ruptly\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=G0PS_egqG-g&amp;ab_channel=Ruptly<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Warsaw, some activists had even disrupted church services in retaliation to the Catholic church\u2019s sway in their nation\u2019s politics. Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski, a rightwing Polish politician and lawyer, called for the defence of churches saying: \u201cWe must defend Polish churches, we must defend them at every price.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2016, he said: \u201cWe will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, women end up giving birth so that the child can be baptised, buried and have a name.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Commissioner for Human Rights on the Council of Europe said: \u201c[Thursday was] a sad day for women\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Removing the basis for almost all legal abortions in <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Poland?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Poland<\/a> amounts to a ban &amp; violates <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/HumanRights?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#HumanRights<\/a>. Today\u2019s ruling of the Constitutional Court means underground\/abroad abortions for those who can afford &amp; even greater ordeal for all others. A sad day for <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WomensRights?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#WomensRights<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Commissioner for Human Rights (@CommissionerHR) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CommissionerHR\/status\/1319273573240893452?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 22, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Words: Maelina Hassel | Subbing: Sara Guadrini<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A ruling forbidding almost all abortions has triggered an uproar from protesters across the country. On Thursday, a landmark decree passed in a Polish tribunal that foetal abnormality abortions are now unconstitutional. \u00a0 Julia Przylebska,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":40263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,93,101,144,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-news","category-politics","category-world","category-worldnews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}