Angry and hurt, Polish women fight back in low fertility blame game

WARSAW – Polish women have not been this angry for this long, and they are taking on the ruling conservatives.

Incensed by remarks from the country’s most powerful politician Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who accused them of drinking excessively and keeping the birth rate low, many planned to take to the streets of Warsaw on Monday.

It was set to be a repeat of the scenes from two years ago when hundreds of thousands of women marched against a near-total ban on legal abortions, in Poland’s largest public protests in decades.

What is different this time is that the ruling party is facing the biggest challenge to its two-term rule before a general election next October.

Monday’s rally “is important to remind women that we have election in a year’s time”, said Ms Marta Lempart, its organiser. 

Protesters planned to gather outside Mr Kaczynski’s house in Warsaw, where police dispersed a crowd of mostly women with batons and tear gas in 2020. If the venue is symbolic, so is the date, coming exactly 104 years after Polish women secured the right to vote.

The Law and Justice party won over some women when it came to power in 2015 with the lavish baby bonuses it handed out. But it quickly alienated many others after the country curbed abortion rights and the government cracked down on protests.

It has also been trying to curtail access to comprehensive sex education and threatened to withdraw from an international pact aimed at tackling domestic violence.

Polish women are now the government’s biggest critics and most vocal opponents.

As the elections approach, the government, which has strong ties to the Catholic Church, seems to be digging in even as polls suggest that declining support amid a widening cost-of-living crisis could leave it unable to form a majority. 

Sensing an opening, the Donald Tusk-led opposition has already pledged to table a Bill allowing legal abortion in the first trimester of the pregnancy. The idea was backed by 70 per cent of respondents in a Nov 7 to 9 survey by pollster Ipsos for the OKO.press news website.

“It was the votes of women in the past that decided whether the government stays or falls,” said Mr Michal Fedorowicz, who worked for a presidential campaign of an opposition candidate in 2015 and now runs a research outfit known as IBIMS. 

Abortion has been back in focus in Europe since Roe v Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in the United States, with a divide hardening between conservative and liberal forces.

In Italy, women fear that the new right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will break a promise not to cut back their rights. She opposes abortion as well as the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

Last Thursday in France, meanwhile, the National Assembly voted to enshrine abortion rights in the country’s constitution, a first step towards making that a reality. President Emmanuel Macron also wants access to legal abortion included in the European Union charter.

Poland’s abortion law was amended by a top court ruling, even though only one in 10 women backed the move.

The tightening of restrictions means pregnancies can be terminated only in the case of rape or incest, or if the woman’s life is in danger due to – among other reasons – irreversible or lethal damage to the foetus.

Poland recorded 17,000 fewer births in the first nine months of the year compared with 2021, according to the statistics office. Non-government groups attribute that to women now being afraid to get pregnant. 

The call to ease abortion restrictions intensified after Ms Izabela Sajbor, a 30-year-old hairdresser from a small town in the country’s south, died of septic shock after doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy, citing the anti-abortion ruling.

Her final hours at the hospital in Pszczyna – where she waited for the foetus with developmental defects to die – became emblematic of the harsh realities facing Polish women. 

The pain and suffering Ms Sajbor endured was highlighted in November when her sister-in-law Barbara Skrobol presented her final text messages at a public hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels. 

“We need to wait for the heart to stop beating,” said Ms Sajbor, who is survived by a 10-year-old daughter, in one of the messages. “Thanks to the Law & Justice there is no other way. Only if they have to save my life they might do something.” BLOOMBERG