Protesters in Poland have defied the coronavirus lockdown to oppose a proposal that would almost completely ban abortion. Public gatherings are banned in the European nation, but videos show people in the streets of the capital Warsaw and Poznań (western Poland) on April 14 standing around 2m apart and holding placards. Others hung posters on bikes or posted videos online in a “virtual protest” as the Polish parliament debated the ban on abortions of fetuses with serious abnormalities on April 15.

Poland’s abortion laws are among the strictest in Europe – it is only allowed in cases of rape or incest, if the mother’s life is at risk or if the fetus is seriously compromised. The draft legislation would ban terminations of a fetus if tests show it to be irreversibly damaged. Currently, that accounts for around 98 percent of legal abortions in the country.

Another bill up for debate would criminalize “the promotion of underage sex”, which women’s rights groups say in effect bans sex education in schools. It states that people who encourage anyone under the age of 18 to have sex could face a maximum of three years in prison. Activists fear that conservative politicians including the country’s governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, are taking advantage of the coronavirus lockdown preventing opponents from organizing large street protests.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on politicians to reject the bills, which were first put forward in 2016 by the nationalist PiS party. But huge street protests in which people wore black caused the government to withdraw the proposals.

“The Polish government’s focus during the pandemic should be to protect people’s health and rights, not diminish them,” Hillary Margolis, Human Rights Watch’s senior women’s rights researcher, has been quoted as saying by the BBC.

The bills began as a citizens’ initiative that enables groups to propose legislation if they collect 100,000 signatures. It is unclear if the Law and Justice party will support the bill. An online petition opposing the bills has gained more than 700,000 signatures and people shared videos using the hashtag #ProtestAtHome. Several opposition MPs joined, posting pictures on Twitter, a social networking platform.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Catholic weekly “Niedziela”, President Andrzej Duda reassured concerned priests. He assured that he would sign the law tightening anti-abortion regulations and emphasized that abortion is murder.

Duda, a PiS ally, is seeking re-election in 2020. PiS has been accused of working hand in glove with the Catholic church and “pork-barrel politics” as the party seeks to curry favor with the electorate most of whom are practicing Christians. According to the government of Poland’s 2014 statistical yearbook, 85.8 percent of Poland’s population is Catholic.

Protesters, including Anja Rubik, a New-York-based Polish supermodel, activist, philanthropist and businesswoman, took to Instagram, a photo-sharing app, to voice their concern. Instagrammers flooded the Polish president’s account on the app with graphics supporting abortion.



(BBC, OKO.press, Wysokie Obcasy)