Poland’s mass protests for abortion rights: ‘This is war’

A proposal to ban most terminations has triggered the largest rallies post-communism Poland has witnessed.

By Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska
6 Nov 2020

Anna has been among the hundreds of thousands who recently marched through the streets of Warsaw, rallying for abortion rights amid the largest protests since the fall of communism.

“When the state fails to protect us, I’ll stand by my sister,” said some signs raised up amid the anger. “I think, I feel, I decide” and “This is war”, read others.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/6/polands-protests-against-abortion-ban-this-is-war

‘A backlash against a patriarchal culture’: How Polish protests go beyond abortion rights

Mass demonstrations have exposed underlying anger at political and religious interference in people’s everyday lives

by Jon Henley, Europe correspondent, and Kasia Strek in Warsaw
Fri 6 Nov 2020

For 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.

Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people nightly defied a government ban on protests, taking to the streets from Warsaw to Łódź, Poznań to Wrocław, Gdańsk to Kraków.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/06/a-backlash-against-a-patriarchal-culture-how-polish-protests-go-beyond-abortion-rights