The aftermath of the polish lawmakers failing to push through the near-total ban on abortions.
After 100 thousand women all over Poland went to the streets to protest against the abortion bill in early October, the government had to back down and pause the decision on accepting the awful law. I went to the capital, Warsaw, to speak to the Polish women and hear their opinion on the bill and whether they are still afraid of the government to continue imposing this restraining law on the female population of the country. My findings were quite shocking in an unexpected way.
Poland may become the second country in Europe after Ireland, where abortions will be completely prohibited. Adopted by the Polish Parliament in the first reading, the bill, in addition to the prohibition of abortions provides for criminal liability not only for pregnant women but also for the doctors who perform the abortion. Moreover, the people who distribute information and provide help to do a legal abortion abroad or in any way are involved in the organisation of the illegal abortion will also get time in prison. In addition, the country stopped financing the program of artificial insemination.
Polish women are absolved from legal punishment for an abortion only if the foetus’s death was unintentional. If the abortion was deliberate, this could lead to one’s deprivation of liberty for a term of 3 months up to 5 years.
Now the Polish legislation governing the abortions, is already one of the most strict in Europe. According to the regulations adopted in 1993, abortions in the country are prohibited except in three cases: when the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, in the case of irreversible damage to the foetus or when there is a threat to the life of the mother.
The initiators of the adoption of the bill was the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Poland. The ruling party “Law and Justice", which is the party of conservative ideology, acting for the traditional values, fully supported this initiative. The leader of the party Jaroslav Kaczynski and the head of the Polish Government Beate Shidlo also supported this law.
This is the second attempt of adopting of such a law. In 2011, the Polish public organisations have already been able to gather more than 500 thousands of signatures in support of the bill, but it was rejected by a majority of deputies.
The public opinion was also in support of this initiative. The results of the recent questionnaire show that 69% of the inhabitants of Poland consider abortions an "immoral and unacceptable" phenomenon and only 14% - think that it is acceptable. And this part of the Poles (14%) frequently take participation in demonstrations against the acceptance of the law on abortions.
This has caused a wave of perturbation and protests in the country. Technically women are fully deprived of the right of choice and are forced to give birth regardless of their desire to have a child.
Izabela Krepsztul a professor from the SWPS University in Warsaw, Poland commented: “It’ a question of your own opinion of life and when it begins, so it will never be a same opinion on the issue. The bill was proposed by the government because they are from the conservative side and this bill awoke a big protest. But I really hope that the protest is not really about the right to get the abortion, but about the right to choose. So when the government may decide to come back, I just hope they won’t make more liberal changes in the law concerning abortions. I think that the law we currently have, is well balanced.”
From this interview I understood that the majority of the older generations of Polish women, are quite conservative and do support the current law on abortions, however they still want to keep their rights of choice.
The part that shocked me during my interviews were the responses of the younger generation (women from 17-20). I met a few Polish students in the university and in some coffee shops around town. Every single young woman that I had a conversation with and attempted to interview, had no idea of what was going on in their own country.
When I asked the question “What is your opinion on the abortions bill and the protest that recently happened?”, I was swarmed with comeback questions such as “I haven’t heard about that, when did it happen?”, “Was this a few years ago?”, “This is awful, did it happen in Poland?”, and many more various questions which just proved the lack of knowledge on the subject.
The reason of this unawareness about the serious issue is that the bill was not presented in the countries’ media coverage. Apparently the news channels, papers and magazines, did not widely cover the issue, therefore many young, Polish women were left in the dark.
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