Protests in Poland Over Abortion Law Continue for Sixth Day (original) (raw)
Europe|Polish Women Lead Strike Over Abortion Ruling Amid Threats of Crackdown
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/world/europe/poland-women-abortion-strike.html
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Polish Women Lead Strike Over Abortion Ruling Amid Threats of Crackdown
The leader of Poland’s ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, accused demonstrators of seeking the destruction of the nation and appealed to supporters to “defend Poland.”
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Tens of thousands of people across Poland have defied Covid-19 restrictions to protest against a new court ruling that imposes a near-total ban on abortion.CreditCredit...Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Published Oct. 28, 2020Updated July 28, 2021
Tens of thousands of women took to the streets in dozens of Polish cities and towns for a nationwide strike on Wednesday to protest a top court’s decision to ban nearly all abortions, even as the nation’s leading politician urged his conservative supporters to “defend Poland.”
The call by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the deputy prime minister and leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, to fight back against the protesters and his description of the opposition as “criminals” seeking to “destroy the Polish nation,” threatened to escalate an already tense moment in the deeply divided nation.
“This is the only way we can win this war,” Mr. Kaczynski said, using martial language that critics said served as a call to arms.
His remarks, made in a speech to Parliament on Wednesday and in a video posted Tuesday night to his supporters on Facebook, came as protests stretched into a sixth straight day and drew in the Roman Catholic Church, with demonstrators interrupting Mass, vandalizing church facades and staging sit-ins at cathedrals as they held coat hangers aloft to symbolize dangerous abortions.
One group of women donned long red dresses and white bonnets meant to evoke the subjugated women in the Handmaid’s Tale novel and television series and marched into a cathedral and down the aisle between worshipers.
The women protesting the abortion ruling have been joined by a host of other groups opposed to what they see as the authoritarian drift of the ruling party. The ban on abortion — made by a court ruling that is not subject to appeal — was for many the culmination of a multiyear effort by the ruling party to undermine the rule of law and, step by step, take control of the judicial system.
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