On October 22, Poland’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling that banned abortion in most cases, prompting the biggest wave of protests since the 1980s when the Solidarity movement toppled the communist regime. Despite the danger posed by coronavirus, the protests turned into a broader expression of anger against the government, as well as its ally, the Church, a rarity in this staunchly Catholic country.
Since 2015, Poland has been run by the conservative and nationalist Law and Justice party whose political platform in large part focuses on Catholic values. It narrowly won a second term in office last year.
Poland already had one of the strict- est abortion laws in Europe. Now, abortion due to foetal defects – by far the most common reason for legal abortions – has been deemed unconstitutional, leaving only a threat to the woman’s life, rape or incest as acceptable reasons to carry out the procedure.
It is not the first time this issue has been brought up by Law and Justice. In 2016, similar anti-abortion legislation was passing through parliament when it met opposition, prompting a nationwide women’s strike. This time, the ruling party opted for the judicial route through the Constitutional Court over which it exerts control.
It may be that the leader of the party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, expected the pandemic to stifle public protests this time. Yet, with three years until the next election, it was a risk he was willing to take, as the need to re-assert himself as the ultimate right-wing choice was greater. He faces a challenge in the relatively new, far-right Confederation party. The newcomer, despite not doing very well in opinion polls, managed to secure 6.8 per cent of the vote and 11 seats in Poland’s lower chamber, the Sejm, in the last parliamentary election.
Whatever the reason behind his decision, the protests have diverted attention from the government’s inability to cope with the pandemic itself. They have also provided a perfect scapegoat as the blame for the rise in COVID-19 cases can easily be attributed to the ‘unruly youths’, which has proved to be a double-win for Kaczynski.
While in power, Law and Justice had already restricted access to emergency contraception – the morning-after pill – and cut funding for IVF treatment. Instead, the party announced its support and funding for Natural Procreative Technology. NaPro is described as the moral alternative to IVF and is approved by the Catholic Church.
It focuses on natural family planning and offers very limited surgical and medical intervention. Evidence that this approach to fertility treatment is effective is lacking.
As Poland’s abortion ban demonstrated, populism is not just an ideology but for some countries a reality that leads to laws being changed. Similar, swift moves against women’s reproductive rights have been carried out by the Trump administration, after the Supreme Court upheld a regulation allowing employers to opt-out of birth control coverage. Trump’s final appointee to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, is well known as a conservative Christian and anti-abortion activist.
It is important to note that Law and Justice is not entirely unfriendly towards women. Their Family 500+ programme, which provides child benefits for every child until they reach 18, fulfilled their 2015 election pledge of increased subsidy for raising children and has proved popular. While these payments meet the needs of low-income families and ultra-conservative minorities, the government’s policies tend to perpetuate a socially conservative norm, which views women through the narrow lens of family and childcare. Since the implementation of the 500+ programme in 2016, Poland’s Institute for Structural Research concluded that by mid-2017, the participation of women with children in the labour force had dropped by 2.4 percentage points. While the number does not sound large, the trend itself is clear.
Radical, nationalist parties, such as Law and Justice can be found all over the world. Poland is one of the few countries currently experiencing what happens when those parties get into power. The protests show that its young people are waking up to the fact that if they stand by a government that deems some groups less worthy of their respect than others, it will in time have a detrimental effect on all their rights.
The next generation doesn’t remember the repression of the old communist regime. They have been brought up with liberal, European values and are not willing to stand idly by and watch as their freedoms are taken away from them. Due to their recent actions, support for Law and Justice has fallen dramatically. This makes another victory for the populist party seem less inevitable than it did a year ago.