It has been two years since thousands of people, mostly women, joined protests in Poland against the near-total ban on legal abortion. Police used violence to disperse demonstrations and arrested thousands of protesters.
On Monday, protesters in Warsaw at the Constitutional Court plan to mark the anniversary of the court’s ruling with another demonstration, in front of the Constitutional Court, which approved the near-total ban. They say they will reiterate their demands to the government to decriminalize abortion and guarantee access to and legalization of abortion for all.
They also plan to commemorate several pregnant women known to have died in Poland since the court decision, after doctors refused to abort them. One death resulted in fraudulent fees opposed to doctors.
The Polish government heeds the protesters’ demands and avoids cracking down on the reproductive rights movement. They will have to ensure that the police respect the right to non-violent protest and do not use disproportionate force. or sanction security officers who violate the rights of protesters.
The European Union can play a key role in insisting on such reforms.
At intermittent rallies across the country, from the Oct. 22, 2020, resolution until 2021, when the resolution went into effect, police dispersed protesters with batons, pepper spray and tear gas.
Government officials said protesters were defying a pandemic-related collection ban: Police were “locking” them in cordoned-off spaces for hours, only increasing the threat of COVID-19 spreading.
Activists, protesters and lawyers responded that the government was criticizing the government, which has been led by the Law and Justice party since 2015. Since coming to power, the government has also curbed sex education, denounced LGBTQ rights, and attacked women’s rights activists. and eroded the rule of law.
Protesters described being “punched in the face,” “beaten with a cane” and “kicked in the groin” by police, in some cases after being pinned to the ground, to a damning 2021 report by Poland’s independent torture prevention body.
Police also transported handcuffed protesters from Warsaw to police stations up to 130 km away on an “unprecedented stopover,” though at least five police stations in the capital had space for them, according to the anti-torture unit. In April 2021, Adam Bodnar, then Polish Commissioner for Human Rights, accused the government of transferring detainees “to obstruct contacts with lawyers. “
The independent report also said police taunted a detained protester with epilepsy who had difficulty breathing. They strangled, beat and kicked another protester and used homophobic slurs and threats against him. In several cases, police reportedly denied or delayed access to medical care. or a lawyer for detained protesters, and ordered unnecessary strip searches.
Marta Puczynska of the Szipla Collective, which provides legal assistance to protesters, told me that a few thousand protesters have been charged, in part for violating the ban on giant gatherings related to the pandemic. Most of the fees were for misdemeanors and were dismissed. But Puczynska said dozens of protesters were still awaiting trial for crimes that carry criminal sentences.
Marta Lempart, co-founder of the protest organization All-Poland Women’s Strike (Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet) is one of those accused of being an “epidemiological threat”, a crime punishable by up to 8 years in prison. The case was opposed to Lempart on technical grounds, yet prosecutors reinstated it in September, Lempart told me. She says the allegations are politically motivated.
Meanwhile, maximum fares opposing government forces for abusing protesters are blocked or have been removed, according to lawyers for the protesters. For example, in 2021, the Warsaw prosecutor’s office closed a thief case against a member of Poland’s internal security firm who accused of driving his car into a protest in October 2020, injuring two women.
During public adequacy emergencies, foreign law allows governments to limit certain rights to protect the public. But such limitations must respect the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality, adding the use of force and non-violent assembly.
The anti-abortion ruling passed through the country’s politically compromised Constitutional Court, which declared abortion unconstitutional for “serious and irreversible fetal malformation or incurable disease that threatens the life of the fetus. “The court approved the nullity of the abortion after the executive failed to get it approved in parliament.
The court’s ruling removed one of the few remaining legal grounds for abortion in Poland. Today, two-thirds of Poles defend the right to abortion, the law prohibits the procedure unless the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the pregnant person, or has effects of rape or incest.
Even in such cases, significant obstacles remain. The requirement to provide evidence of rape makes rape victims highly unlikely to have abortions, adding to others who fled the war in neighboring Ukraine, reproductive rights activists told me. (Sexual violence through armed teams in wartime is a war crime. )
Many medical professionals also refuse to offer abortions, citing conscientious objection, in some cases, when the woman’s life is in danger.
The Polish government is taking real steps to reform its politically engaged judicial system, which has helped roll back abortion rights. judges to obtain tens of billions of euros in grants and loans.
Poles approved some judicial reforms in June, but independent judges and human rights advocates denounced the adjustments as superficial.
The EU also insists that Poland, and all member states, respect the right to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care as part of their basic rights obligations.
Without an independent judiciary to protect against imaginable police abuses, the right to peacefully protest the right to access safe abortion will remain elusive at best. And more pregnant women will suffer the consequences.