abortion – Pike & Hurricane

The #strajkkobiet phenomenon

Ioana Pavel — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:11:08 +0000

The #strajkkobiet phenomenon in Poland is made up of two sides. The first can be grossly defined as the hundreds of thousands of women protesting and demanding unencumbered access to legal abortion, and the Government vehemently trying – and ultimately succeeding – to restrict this particular right. How is the phenomenon unfolding?

On October 22, 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal imposed a near-total ban on abortions. The ruling allows for abortions in cases of sexual assault, incest or when the mother’s life in danger, but bans it in cases of fetal abnormalities, whereas around 96% of abortions in Poland have taken place in cases of fetal abnormalities. The ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been pursuing an agenda of restricting abortions since the beginning of its mandate, and has promoted it as a campaign promise. Since February, the decision has taken effect.

Both sides use human rights rhetoric to justify their positions. Government rhetoric argues that a human life must be protected from the moment of conception until death, citing the right to life as well as the freedom of conscience and religion, as protected by the Polish Constitution. Meanwhile, the protesters speak of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, arguing that the ban will not prevent abortions, but merely force women to seek them illegally. Beyond the approximate 1,000 abortions carried out legally, women’s rights groups estimated that 200,000 polish women still seek abortions either illegally. Those who can afford it will seek an abortion abroad. Those who carry out illegal abortions and those who aid women in seeking out illegal abortions risk a sentence of imprisonment for up to three years. About a dozen convictions of this kind take place annually.

A key player on the Government’s team is the Catholic Church, which supports the ban wholeheartedly. In 2015, 92% of the population identified as Catholic and 61% said that religion has a very high or a high importance in their life. Whereas the state and the church are by law supposed to be independent from each other, a Reuters analysis shows that priests have been known to display election posters on parish property and talk about the elections during mass.

Meanwhile, a key player on the protesters’ side is the European Union, which nonetheless has no competence to impose law on reproductive rights. It does, however, take a stand on the issue. In a 2020 submission by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the Commissioner found that “since 2014 almost 4,000 Polish doctors have signed a “Declaration of Faith of Catholic doctors and medical students regarding human sexuality and fertility”, through which they expressed their commitment to following “divine law” in their professional work and to reject abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilisation.” Whereas a doctor who signs such a declaration must refer the patient to another practitioner, in practice, timely access to an abortion is severely and systematically hindered. According to the same submission, in some areas and in some hospitals, virtually all doctors have signed such a declaration and women are forced to seek an abortion illegally.

The same report found that sexual and reproductive health is further dampened by a 2017 decision that the emergency contraceptive pill would be made available only on prescription, as opposed to over-the-counter. However, prescriptions are delayed by doctors who refuse to sign them based on the same freedom of conscience and religion clause, the long wait or the cost for an appointment, and the fact that minors need a legal guardian to accompany them when making such an appointment.

In a press release on November 26, 2020, the European Parliament has spoken out against the ban, citing that women’s rights were being violated and their lives were put at risk. The EP had found that access to prenatal screening, which could find fetal abnormalities and result in a request for an abotion, was being restricted by doctors using the conscience clause. Meanwhile, Poland has announced that it plans to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, wherein member States of the Council of Europe vow to “protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence”, on that grounds that the Convention imposes “a leftist ideology”. It is up to the same Constitutional Tribunal to review the Istanbul Convention and make a final decision.

Meanwhile, the #strajkkobiet phenomenon is not about a protest against one particular ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal. The phenomenon is about a system of oppression that pushed women to break the law in order to have access to the same rights that other European Union countries choose to protect. Women who do not have the means to go abroad for an abortion will end up getting an illegal one. The lucky ones will be under some kind of medical supervision. Those without that option will go for an at-home improvisation that will, in some cases, be fatal. The #strajkkobiet phenomenon is about a system of oppression that left women with no choice but to protest.

Related articles:

The legality of abortion

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The legality of abortion

Elena Wasserzier — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 14:50:09 +0000

On the 28th of September, the Amnesty International Student Association of Malmö University hosted a movie screening about the fight for safe abortion rights in Ireland, since the date also hallmarks the international day of safe abortions. The association made use of the occasion to remind people all over the world of women’s reproductive rights.

Additionally to the movie screening, a song written by Robin Atiken about “the legality of abortion” was performed. The song renders facts that can be found on the official website of Amnesty International and it constitutes a display of circumstances and reality for women across the globe.

The lyrics are presented below:

The legality of abortion is seen as somewhat crude

but listen as I sing, it will help you out dude

A quarter of pregnancies,

end in this procedure

So take that at your leisure.

If safety’s your worry then listen don’t hurry

25 million unsafe abortions,

Are done each year

This whole issue brings me a harsh tear

It it were safe,

Women would be saved

Are you hearing me quite clear?

A medical error called

the “chilling effect”

Where the line of abortion is not

scientifically checked

Post abortion care goes down

That makes all of us some clowns

If you shun the operation

A stigma will be the occasion

Our culture will be shamed

And we’ll all be to blame

CHORUS: x3

Why fight?

It’s a woman’s right.

If you disagree you can choose as you please.

People are delusional, when they think we have already achieved equality in regards to the sexes. This is not the case and the world still struggles to change old patriarchal patterns towards equity and equality for all. Even as recently as 2020, reproductive rights remain a major element in women’s fight for equality in multiple countries across the globe.

As depicted in the movie “When Women Won”, Ireland has just allowed the right for safe and legal abortions in 2018, which is only two years ago. Before that, women had to travel to England, literally cross a country border, to receive a safe abortion and be able to decide over their own body and their reproductive rights. The referendum which was adopted on the 28th of May 2018, granted the repeal of the almost constitutional abortion ban.

This illustrates that the world is very far from the progress women’s rights advocates aspire to see. Literal baby steps are taken in regard to women’s reproductive rights, because Ireland is not the only country which is late in history. The USA, for example has shown in the last couple of years that history can also go backwards in its timeline, when a couple of states, e.g. Virginia, decided to ban abortions and to deem it illegal. When this did not work out completely, the state aggravated its abortion laws, which made it a lot harder for women to seek an abortion when needed.

However, Virginia was eventually sued over their unfair abortion laws by Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. The lawsuit considered the following laws as “burdensome and medically unnecessary”:

Second trimester abortions must be performed in a hospital;

Abortions must only be performed by a physician;

Medical facilities providing more than four first trimester abortions per month must undergo strict licensing requirements;

Patients must undergo an ultrasound and counseling 24 hours before an abortion, requiring them to make two trips to a clinic; and

Abortion is a class 4 felony if the requirements are not followed

The plaintiffs claimed that “the Commonwealth of Virginia has spent over four decades enacting layer upon layer of unnecessary and onerous abortion statutes and regulations.”

The list goes on: El Salvador and Nicaragua, in Central America, still enforce discriminatory laws that ban abortions in almost all conditions. More than 40% of the world’s women in childbearing age live in countries where, abortion is medically either very restricted, not accessible at all or banned and illegal, with partly grave penalties as a result of violation of the law.

Related articles:

Politics of fertility

Politically conscious art as backlash: Amanda Palmer’s “There Will Be No Intermission”

Picture Credits:

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Victoria Pickering, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Politics of fertility

EditorChief — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 12:37:30 +0000

Is the state planning your family for you?

As many political historians or demographers would confirm, state interest in the fertility of its citizens is not merely a recent phenomenon. But when can we speak of interest and where does it cross the boundary of interference? How does the state influence or limit our choices, directly or indirectly, and what are the consequences of it to the individual or a group of people? The level of interference does not have to reach the horrors of the work of Dr. Mengele, or equal the dystopian fiction envisioned in The Handmaid’s Tale, to be of significance to the life of a citizen, a family, or even a specific demographic segment. Should our right to family life be a private or a public matter?

The international organizations on the matter

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights offers information related to sexual and reproductive rights, but addresses these rights largely from the perspective of gender-based discrimination against women. Amnesty International, without distinction to location or status, demands that “all the decisions made about your own body should be yours.”

Certainly, many choices related to human fertility have to do with the female body, which is why limitations to the access to e.g. sex education and family planning; contraceptives; legal abortion and professional reproductive health services; protection from forced marriage, sterilization or pregnancy; help for victims of rape; can all lead to an unproportionate private burden. Whether the limitation is a question of means or culture is perhaps indifferent to the ones affected.

China and the extreme example of family planning policy

After over three decades of the well-known one-child policy, China is maintaining its interest in the fertility of its citizens, and examining the outcome of the 2016 introduction of the two-child policy. It appears, the loosening of the restrictions on family size, however, has not resulted in the desired increase in birth rates. The official Year of the Pig stamps release one year ago even led to speculation whether the Chinese government has further policy reforms in mind.

In addition to the former policy, the changes in the Chinese society, the fierce competition for success, as well as the increased quality of life and education, have contributed to the decrease of the desired family size. One child per family was long strictly enforced and gradually became accepted as the norm. There is further criticism that China is not changing its legislation for the freedom of the people, but as a means to an end: to experiment with its population and to keep the wheels of the economy spinning at a desirable rate.

For those who lived their reproductive age under the one-child policy, the only child may represent the sole hope for the future. The loss of an only child is devastating, and has been estimated to have been the fate of one million of aged Chinese parents by 2015, expected to reach 11 million by 2050. There’s even a Chinese term to describe them, they are shidu fumu (“bereaved parents”). There are suggestions that the shiduers suffer from a more intense form of grief due to the importance of family in Chinese culture, and seem to even have developed strategies to spend family holidays in the company of others who’ve suffered the same fate.

The right to abortion – an ongoing discussion

Whereas the above discussed limitations on family size are an example of direct state interference with fertility, there is an ongoing debate about the legal rights of women to terminate an unintended pregnancy. When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, many feared what his nomination could mean for millions of women. The speculation on whether he could help overturn Roe v. Wade peaked after the vote on abortion legislation in Alabama.

The vote in Alabama also brought up questions on intersectionality. Rightfully so, as the votes in favor were cast by white males. Those facing the direct impacts of banning legal abortion in the state are women, often of lesser means, and of color. Using the CDC Abortion Surveillance data from 2015, in the United States nearly half of the voluntary terminations of pregnancy were requested by black women, the Hispanic at a slightly higher rate than the white.

Social inequality leads to reduced access to proper medical care and contraception, which goes hand in hand with increased demand for safe medical help in termination of unintended pregnancy. By denying the access of disadvantaged women to the latter, a situation occurs where the same basic right is in fact denied twice. The results of the policy having the potential to become fatal for many.

The policy of lack of policy

Beside the obvious interventions in female reproductive behaviour, it is possible to affect our family size through subtle policies and decisions. Logically, it seems to matter whether and how the state incentivizes parenthood by paid parental leaves. Or whether we feel our concerns for the future are adequately answered by the state in order for us to have a family of our own.

The University of Lund hit a nerve when it published a 2017 study on the four lifestyle choices of the individual that would significantly reduce one’s carbon footprint. The study concluded that in developed countries the most effective way to reduce individual carbon footprint is to have one less child, with the reservation that if overall national emissions decrease, so would the value on cumulative emissions from descendants.

The study did not comment on refraining from having any children at all but compared the effects of different types of reduction. The reaction of some was to conclude that voluntary childlessness is the most environmentally friendly choice to make.

A Finnish climate correspondent, journalist and mother commented on the idea and asked whom are we saving the planet for if not a future generation. Similarly, she argued that her personal carbon footprint has in fact decreased as a mother, due to increased interest for the environment and decreased interest in consumerism. But what if the inaction many governments have recently been accused of, in response to climate change, is reason enough to see the world as too uncertain to become a parent?

The future, an open-ended question

As a response, to defend its interests of a “demographically balanced” population structure, it may be a dire necessity for the state to come up with renewed strategies to stimulate and not simply regulate the behaviour of its citizens. And as much as the state impacts our reproductive behaviour, it is certainly not the only one. Without getting into a debate about the role of culture in our individual choices, it is relevant to recognize that there are concurrent developments with those dictated by the state. Yet, as intrusively personal as the question might be, the state will without a doubt continue asking you: Are you going to have children?

by Johanna Laaksonen

Photo credits

Heron, Pixabay

Her duty, Gauthier Delecroix, CC BY 2.0

Counter March Pro-Choice Rally, Zhu, CC BY-NC 2.0

Hand Earth to Next Generation, Pixabay

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