A Polish abortion ban would turn women back into childbearing instruments

(and a great big FUCK YOU to the woman-hating gestational slavers of all belief systems, and their bought-and sold gynoticians)

A Polish abortion ban would turn women back into childbearing instruments

The proposed law will crush the advances we have made over 27 years. I’m disgusted at the prospect of reason, progress and liberalism being stifled again


‘The coat hanger – the crudest tool an underground abortion can be performed with – has become an unlikely symbol of those demanding greater rights for women n Poland’ Photograph: Janek Skarżyński/AFP/Getty Images


As a Pole, I am proud of the dramatic changes my country has achieved in the 27 years since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. I have watched Warsaw transformed from a miserable, post-communist city into a cosmopolitan metropolis. Liberal currents had been gaining strength, and everything seemed to be going in the right direction. That was until last October, when the Law and Justice party (known by its Polish acronym as PiS) was elected, with an agenda of nationalist conservatism, Euroscepticism and Catholic propaganda.



The new government started by crippling one of the most important institutions of Polish democracy: the constitutional tribunal. Sections of the media were quickly put under government control to “represent Christian morality”, all the top editors replaced by PiS affiliates. Lech Wałęsa’s alleged collaboration with the Communists became the main topic of public debate – a mere decoy while PiS continues to violate democratic values in ways that shock those who look closely.

Yet it wasn’t until the latest political development that I felt a real shiver of disgust towards the PiS government. A strict anti-abortion law (aka the “prenatal life protection law”) has been submitted to the Polish parliament. It will protect the life of an unborn child at all costs, including the distress – or the death – of its mother. Many women had been hoping for the anti-abortion law to change, but this is not the change we had envisaged. At present abortion is legal in Poland only if the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother’s life or health; if the foetus displays conditions such as Down’s syndrome (and then only if approval for an abortion is given by a medical professional); or if the pregnancy is a result of rape.


The situation will be much more severe if the new bill – backed by the prime minister, Beata Szydło – comes into force. A woman won’t be allowed to end an ectopic pregnancy even though there is little chance of producing a surviving child. You won’t be allowed to abort a foetus with a terminal illness or severe disability. Pregnancies from rape will also be protected. The proposed bill generously acknowledges that rape is a harmful act, but it sees abortion as “punishing the child” for the harm brought upon its mother.

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/08/polish-abortion-ban-law-poland