Women once again took to the streets across Poland on Wednesday October 28, the day scheduled for their national strike, against a court ruling imposing an almost total ban on abortion in that country.
Read also: In Poland, the abortion battle resumes
Despite the restrictions due to the coronavirus, protests have been held for seven days in major cities, but also in a multitude of traditionally conservative small towns, according to media images.
In Warsaw, demonstrators gathered in front of the headquarters of an organization of ultra-Catholic jurists, Ordo Iuris, at the origin of several initiatives aimed at a total ban on abortion, before heading to the headquarters of the public television TVP, considered to be the main propaganda organ of the conservative power.
"Women's hell"
Last week, the Constitutional Court, reformed by the PiS and complying with its wishes, outlawed abortion in the event of a serious malformation of the fetus, ruling that it is "
incompatible
" with the Constitution.
Poland's abortion law was already one of the most restrictive in Europe.
The Court de facto limited the right to abortion to only cases of danger to death for the pregnant woman and pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
Read also: Abortion: the debate on the extension of the time limit for abortion divides
Following this decision, the demonstrators, mostly young, targeted churches, whose walls they tagged with slogans such as "
Women's hell
", "
It's war
", or disrupted Sunday masses, unprecedented actions in this predominantly Catholic country.
They also blocked traffic for hours in dozens of Polish towns.
On Tuesday, the leader of the ultra-Catholic nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS, in power), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, denounced "
attempts to destroy
" the country and called on his supporters to "
defend the churches
" against the demonstrators favorable to the abortion, while Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki urged an end to "barbarism" demonstrations of anger against this judgment.
Friday, a big demonstration is planned in Warsaw.