MPs and campaigners accuse Polish government of betrayal over abortion laws

Speaker says parliament will not consider updating country’s draconian abortion policies until mid-April

Weronika Strzyżyńska and Ashifa Kassam
Thu 7 Mar 2024

Women’s groups and politicians have taken aim at Poland’s parliamentary speaker, accusing him of betrayal and seeking to “freeze” the issue of abortion, after he said parliament would not consider legislation to tackle the country’s near-total ban on abortion until mid-April.

“We feel disappointed and betrayed,” said Dominika Ćwiek from Legal Abortion, one of the groups battling the country’s draconian abortion policies. “The rights of Polish women are being treated as a side issue.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/07/mps-and-campaigners-accuse-polish-government-of-betrayal-over-abortion-laws

In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ruled states should decide the legality of abortion, voters at the state level have been doing just that: 4 essential reads

June 12, 2023
Lorna Grisby, Senior Politics & Society Editor

When the Supreme Court ruled on June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that states – some of which have been chipping away at women’s access to abortion for years – should decide the legality of abortion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s majority opinion that “women are not without electoral or political power.”

In one fell swoop, the court’s 6-3 ruling that abortion is not a federal constitutional right overturned Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, and 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey – two decisions that provided federal protections for abortion.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/in-the-year-since-the-supreme-court-overturned-roe-v-wade-and-ruled-states-should-decide-the-legality-of-abortion-voters-at-the-state-level-have-been-doing-just-that-4-essential-reads-207299

Will Poland have a referendum on its abortion law, and what might the outcome be?

APR 3, 2023
By Daniel Tilles

Why is this an issue?

Since January 2021, Poland has had a near-total ban on abortion following an October 2020 ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal (TK) that outlawed the most common form of legal abortion.

Previously, Poland had already had one of Europe’s strictest abortion laws, with terminations allowed in only three circumstances: if the pregnancy threatened the mother’s life or health, if it resulted from a criminal act (such as rape), or if the foetus was diagnosed with a serious birth defect.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/04/03/will-poland-have-a-referendum-on-its-abortion-law-and-what-might-the-outcome-be/

Democrats Want To Put Abortion On The Ballot — But Many States Won’t Let Them

By Nathaniel Rakich and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

DEC. 13, 2022

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion-rights advocates took their fight to the states — and they won. The pro-choice side emerged victorious in nearly every 2022 election where abortion rights were at stake — including five ballot measures to either enshrine or abolish abortion rights in state constitutions. For many liberals, it felt like they had hit upon a winning strategy to protect abortion rights in a post-Roe world: bring the issue directly to the people. Talk quickly started about putting more pro-abortion-rights amendments on the ballot in 2024. But there’s a problem: Many states don’t let citizens put constitutional amendments on the ballot. And that includes most of the states with the strictest abortion bans.

Continued: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-want-to-put-abortion-on-the-ballot-but-many-states-wont-let-them/

13.12.2022

For Churches, Abortion Politics Is a Double-Edged Sword

Ireland and Poland went in entirely opposite directions on abortion. Why?

By Amanda Taub
Sept. 21, 2022

For the past several years, as I have struggled to put the escalating tumult of global abortion politics into some sort of order inside my own mind, I have returned over and over to two events.

They happened in different countries, in different years. They produced opposite outcomes. And yet I could not shake the feeling that looking at them together might help me understand something important about the way the world works.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/world/europe/abortion-ireland-poland.html

Yes, most Latinos are Christian. No, that doesn’t make them anti-abortion.

Why Latino voters have such a misunderstood stance on abortion.

By Nicole Narea
Sep 20, 2022

Alba has never been in a situation where she had to consider an abortion, even during four high-risk pregnancies. And the Latina mother of five from Dodge City, Kansas, doesn’t know what she’d do if she were in such a situation.

“Even if I don’t agree with it for myself, I’m not going to get in the way of somebody else seeking health care,” said Alba, who was raised Catholic and asked to be identified only by her first name because of the stigma around abortion in her conservative community. “The decisions that I make for myself are for myself only.”

Continued: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23322487/abortion-latino-voters-roe-midterms-election

20.09.2022

Commentary

Featured

abortion referendum

Alejandro Rangel-López

Brendan Steinhauser

Elizabeth Estrada

Latinos and abortion.

Matt Barreto

Mike Madrid

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice

These states will have abortion on the ballot in November

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
September 5, 2022

Voters in a small number of states will decide in November how those states should handle the abortion issue. Abortion rights have taken on an increased significance and become a top focus in the midterm elections after the US Supreme Court's ruling this summer that there was no longer a federal constitutional right to the procedure.

In its August primary, Kansas was the first state in the nation to let voters weigh in on abortion since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade, and Kansans overwhelmingly chose to reject a state constitutional amendment that would have given state lawmakers the green light to help enact more restrictive abortion laws,

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/politics/2022-midterm-elections-abortion-ballot-measures/index.html

San Marino legalizes abortion, year after voters gave OK

Frances D'emilio, The Associated Press
Sep 01, 2022

Advocates for abortion rights in San Marino expressed satisfaction Thursday that lawmakers voted to legalize abortion in the tiny republic, one of the last European states to have had the procedure outlawed under all circumstances.

Wednesday’s parliamentary vote was the culmination of a referendum last year in which citizens overwhelmingly voted to overturn a 150-year-old law that criminalized the procedure. The legislature of the predominantly Catholic nation voted 32 in favor, seven against and 10 abstaining to make abortion legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/san-marino-legalizes-abortion-year-after-voters-gave-ok

01.09.2022

conscientious objectors

Elena D’Amelio

Giacomo Simoncini

San Marino Women's Union

Ireland’s Struggle for Abortion Rights Should Be an Inspiration for the US

Ireland’s Struggle for Abortion Rights Should Be an Inspiration for the US

BY SINÉAD KENNEDY
Aug 22, 2022

Irish pro-choice activists had to overcome a rigid constitutional ban on abortion that was in place for more than 30 years. They succeeded by putting mass mobilization and a confident assertion of the right to choose at the heart of their campaign.

In May 2018, the Irish electorate voted by a two-to-one majority to remove or “repeal” the prohibition on abortion, known as the Eighth Amendment, from the country’s constitution. While opinion polls had suggested that pro-choice campaigners would win, most predicted a nerve-rackingly close result; certainly no one anticipated the sheer scale of the victory and the support for abortion access found across every section of society, from young to old, urban to rural.

Continued: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/ireland-abortion-rights-repeal-campaign-us-roe

‘These women are not victims’ – Paula Rego’s extraordinary Abortion series

The artist blazed into Portugal’s 1998 abortion
referendum with powerful images of women in backstreet clinics. But there is no
blood, no gore – just feeling. The works may have helped swing a later vote

Hettie Judah
Thu 9 Jun 2022

In 1998, the year of a Portuguese referendum debate on abortion, Paula Rego
poured her fierce, formidable passion into 10 large paintings set in backstreet
abortion clinics. These were a direct gesture of protest at the cruelty of
anti-abortion laws. Focused on individual women positioned on single beds in
improvised operating theatres, the paintings of the Abortion series are so dark
and claustrophobic that you can almost feel the heat and stickiness, and smell
the adrenal sweat.

Rego pulls the focus of the abortion debate back to the woman’s experience.
There is no blood, no gore, no biological nastiness to see here: this is all
about feeling, both physical and psychological. First-hand discussion of
abortion remains taboo even 24 years later – Rego’s works carry us into the
heart of this unseen, unspoken terrain.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jun/09/women-not-victims-paula-rego-extraordinary-abortion-series

09.06.2022