The Polish government announced on the 27th that the abortion law has been officially implemented, which means that the strictest abortion law in Polish history has entered into force.
The law almost completely prohibits abortion for women, except when pregnancy seriously threatens the life and health of women or when a woman is pregnant after rape and incest.
The implementation of this decree angered the Polish people and triggered another large-scale protest.
According to the Guardian on the 28th, on the night of the Polish government announced the adoption of the abortion decree, thousands of people ignored the epidemic prevention regulations and gathered again outside the Constitutional Court building in Warsaw to protest.
Many other cities also held protests, and the local police had to strengthen police dispatch to maintain social order.
Polish college student Cezzare, 23, stood in front of the Constitutional Court building and protested: “This stupid ruling cannot stop abortion…
These judges are the culprits for every woman who suffered from this ruling or was forced to give birth to a sick baby.” The protesters then crossed the city center, and they came to the seat of the Polish government with the slogan “Women’s Strike”.
This is the second time that a large-scale protest broke out after the Polish Constitutional Court ruled on the abortion law last October.
The passage of the decree was criticized by people from all walks of life, and Poland’s right-wing ruling Party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), was criticized for politicizing the Constitutional Court and using it to promote an ultra-conservative abortion agenda.
Boris Budka, Poland’s largest opposition party and leader of the Centrist Civic Platform Party, said: “No law-abiding government should respect this ruling.” Budka also said: “The Polish government is trying to cover up its incompetence [in response to the epidemic].”
The Polish Electoral Daily article on the 28th questioned Kaczy ?? ski, the leader of the ruling party of Poland, “why to punish the Poles”. The article pointed out that the ruling party’s forced passage of the ruling by using the relevant ban during the coronavirus epidemic was a “depretation of weakness and hypocrisy”.
The number of people infected with the novel coronavirus in Poland remains high, thousands of small enterprises have gone bankrupt, and many people are on the verge of unemployment.
In this way, the abortion law ruling will only aggravate social tearing and confrontation, which may bring new turmoil to Polish society.
The Polish newspaper Republika also commented that the Polish government forcibly adopted such a controversial decree for purely political and electoral purposes and was a “sympment of cynicism and lack of responsibility”.
The latest poll shows that the support rate of Poland’s ruling party, the Law and Justice Party, has declined in recent months.
The ruling party legislator Batwomei Froblewski countered that “the state cannot deprive a person of his life just because he is ill, disabled or in poor health.” Polish government officials also said that the authorities are making great efforts to help parents of children with disabilities, and critics believe that they have not done enough.
For the past three months, the delay in the implementation of this ruling has disturbed the Polish people, and doctors who perform abortion surgery cannot determine whether the operation they do are legal every day. Many Polish women have abortions by taking drugs, while more women are forced to choose to have abortion abroad.
On October 22, 2020, the Constitutional Court of Poland ruled that abortion due to severe fetal malformations is unconstitutional.
Shortly after the ruling was announced, more than 400,000 Polish women launched a “women’s general strike” in hundreds of towns across the country. Under pressure, the right-wing ruling party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), postponed the implementation of the decree.
Unexpectedly, more than three months later, the Polish government still implemented the decree, which disappointed and angered many Polish people.
CNN reported on the 28th that only 5 of the 15 judges of the Polish Constitutional Court objected to the controversial abortion decree, and these dissenting judges only objected to the reasons for the ruling, not the content of the ruling.
The Constitutional Court held that the ruling was to protect the right to life of the unborn baby and told legislators that they should use the words “child” and “mother” when talking about abortion, rather than “fetus” and “pregnant mother”.
For mainly Catholic Poland, even without legislative restrictions, women can have abortions very little, because more and more doctors refuse to operate on religious grounds.
Abortion has always been a highly controversial topic. Although many people believe that whether to choose abortion is a woman’s right, many people think that abortion is wrong for political, religious, emotional and personal moral reasons. Therefore, the laws on abortion vary from country to country.
According to the latest statistics on the website of the World Population Review, a US think tank, so far, 26 countries in the world believe that abortion is illegal under any circumstances, and 37 countries stipulate that abortion is only allowed if there is a major threat to the life of pregnant women. In Latin America, abortion is all banned in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
In Europe, Ireland, Andorra, the Vatican and San Marino prohibit abortion for citizens, and Malta, although it also prohibits abortion, stipulates that abortion can be performed if it is necessary to save the lives of pregnant women.
Since the legalization of abortion in 1973 in the United States, it has been challenged under Trump’s administration, and many Republicans hope to enact laws to restrict abortion.
Most EU countries allow women to have abortions within 10 to 14 weeks of pregnancy, while the Netherlands has the most relaxed abortion law, which can be performed at almost any stage of pregnancy
