WARSAW, Poland – New protests broke out thursday night in Polish cities against a recent High Court ruling that tightened already strict abortion laws, and participants ignored a call from the Polish prime minister to abstain due to pandemic restrictions when COVID-19 infections peaked massively.
Hundreds of other angry screamers amassed outdoors the construction of public television in the capital, Warsaw and other cities, for an eighth day of protests, but their number was lower than in previous days.
Hours earlier, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had said that the dispute will have to be resolved through dialogue, which through repeated mass rallies that are prohibited by pandemic restrictions. On Thursday, Poland reached a new daily contagion record of more than 20,100 in the country of 38 million.
“I ask that these demonstrations be cancelled because of the epidemic,” Morawiecki said, stressing that the fitness formula is on edge.
But women’s rights activists showed plans for a massive march in Warsaw on Friday night, and other movements and blockades in the city next week.
Large crowds have protested daily over the past week in the Catholic-majority country after a higher court ruled that abortion of fetuses with birth defects was unconstitutional. Police estimate that some 430,000 more people took part in the protests on Wednesday alone.
Earlier Thursday, Polish President Andrzej Duda partially broke ranks with conservative leaders in his country who pushed for new abortion restrictions and said he believed women have the right to abort fetuses with fatal defects.
“There’s no way the law will demand this kind of heroism from a woman,” Duda said in an interview with RADIO RMF FM. The president said he is still in favor of banning abortion in cases of fetuses with non-lethal birth defects. like Down syndrome.
The deep divisions that had long been brewing in Poland are now bursting into the streets, and other young people respond to a call through women’s rights activists to protect their freedoms. Young protesters, even teenagers, deliberately sing vulgar against the right-wing law and justice party to underline their anger with the ruling team and that there can be no negotiation with them, language analysts say.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s top hard politician, leader of law and justice, had called on his supporters to come and protect the churches after protesters interrupted Mass and aerosol-painted churches on Sunday.
Many interpreted Kaczynski’s call as an authorization from violent protesters.
Lawmakers in the opposition Civic Coalition will call for a vote of censure against Kaczynski, who is deputy minister, in parliament, saying he triggered massive social tensions at a time in the pandemic.
“He lit a chimney and poured gas on it,” said deputy opponent Monika Wielichowska.
The date of the vote is unclear. The ruling party and its two small coalition partners have 10 votes more than the opposition in the lower house.
On Wednesday night, men from a far-right Polish youth organization attacked taking part in protests in Wroclaw, Poznan and Bialystok.
However, an organization guarding a church in the northeastern city of Bialystok held a banner in which women appeared saying that their anger deserves to be directed against the government, not against the churches.
Once the court ruling is published and takes effect, abortion will be legal when a woman’s health or life is in danger or when a pregnancy is the result of a crime as rape or incest.
Duda’s comments on Thursday contrasted with his initial reaction last week when he welcomed the court’s decision: he has now ruled against abortions of fetuses with Down syndrome, which make up the majority of the more than 1,000 legal interruptions carried out a year in Poland. called for a new law to distinguish between fatal and non-fatal defects.
“I think there are rules that, in the event of fatal defects, will unequivocally guarantee women’s rights,” he said.
Their comments have no legal effect on the court’s ruling and deserve not to appease the protesters.
Kaczynski’s comment that Duda “is the president and has the right” to say so.
He also pointed to a difference of opinion with Kaczynski about the security factor, saying that the police will only be guilty for protecting the streets.