According to the New York Times, Poland’s women are so angry because Poland is the country with the strictest restrictions on abortion in Europe.
Before Wednesday, women were allowed to have abortion in only three situations: pregnant with abnormal fetuses, pregnant with sexual assault, and life-threatening conditions.
However, last October, Poland’s Constitutional Court announced that women with abnormal fetuses could not have abortion.
According to the New York Times, since 1,074 of all 1,100 abortions in the country last year were due to abnormal fetuses, the ban basically cut off the possibility of Polish women choosing abortion, not to mention that once they have a deformed fetus, they have to give birth to it..
Therefore, as early as the end of October last year, many angry Polish women and their supporters had launched a large-scale demonstration to protest.
According to the New York Times at that time, the protest was the largest in Poland since the political upheaval in 1989.
However, although these protests caused the abortion ban to be delayed at one time, it went into effect on Wednesday.
This naturally aroused the outrage of the protesters, and tens of thousands of people chose to march on the streets again – even if they were facing cold winter nights and the threat of the coronavirus epidemic.
According to the New York Times, Poland’s current ruling party, the Law and Justice Party, is a major target of protesters.
The New York Times also called this conservative right-wing populist party the main reason for Poland’s increasing conservative abortion.
However, according to the analysis of other Western media and observers, Poland’s equally extremely conservative Catholic forces is also a major reason why Polish women are unable to choose independently about abortion.
Many women protesters in Poland have also repeatedly criticized the ruling party while targeting the Catholic forces in the country. Some analysts also believe that Poland’s Law and Justice Party will be so conservative about abortion, also to please Catholic forces.
However, in the political upheavals in Poland in the late 1980s, Catholic forces once played a role as the main promoter in Western public opinion with a rather “positive” image.
This is also why after the “change of heaven”, Poland quickly became the most “pivot” of all European countries to Catholicism.
But 30 years later, Catholicism and the Polish authorities who profes Catholicism have instead become the target of resistance to a new generation of Polish women and young people, and even Western public opinion began to criticize them.
This change is both ironic and sad.
Some Western Catholic publications have repeatedly publicly stated that Poland’s political upheaval had “merit” for Catholic promotion.
