Poland – 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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Tightening the Grip: Is Experience Necessary for a Successful Autocrat?

Filip Zahariev — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 18:21:01 +0000

Right-wing populists and autocrats do not accept defeat. Challenged by reality, they clamp down—their position is rigid, very often averse to even the slightest possibility of change. Truth has been devalued, facts are treated as opinion, those who possess knowledge and expertise are treated with contempt. We live in an age of rampant anti-intellectualism, where the divisions on social issues are widening instead of narrowing. Consensus has never been further away, as the divisions on social issues show, ranging from equality to freedom of speech and the press to racism to xenophobia.

The Man Who Would Be King

This has been illustrated full well over the last month. Look to the USA. After months of sowing doubt about mail-in voting, Trump lost because of it. He has not conceded—and he never will. It’s likely he believes the baseless accusations he spouts; populists and autocrats are ever prone to the worst bouts of paranoia. If the political crisis in Belarus has hammered a point home, it is that no would-be autocrat is willing to go quietly into the night. Even if Trump himself is aware of reality, his rhetoric has made certain that a sizeable number of the seventy-three million Americans, who cast their votes for him, will never accept Joseph Biden as their legitimate president.

Seventy-three million. That is the number of souls who have voiced unconditional support for the conduit of the United States’ forty-fifth president. For the strongman whose approach has placed loyalty first, second, and third, and made competence not even a necessity. This approach has flourished on all levels of Trump’s White House, decreasing America’s prestige in the eyes of its old allies, while encouraging others of Trump’s ilk––the elected despots who lead ever more “illiberal states,” if we use the term Hungary’s Viktor Orban employed some years back.

America’s Favourite Strongman

Orban himself has much to teach us about control, more even than Trump. While one flaunts his inexperience in public office, the other is an old hand at politics. Following the European Union’s attempt to rein in Hungary and Poland’s “waning of democracies” via a rule of law mechanism, both countries’ leaders have vetoed the EU’s budget for the next seven years—a move that might very well bring about a full-blown political crisis in the bloc. It would come as no surprise if the Union blinks before Orban does—the individual member-states of the EU are desperate for the financial relief this new budget will provide them, to deal with the aftermath of the coronavirus.

Orban has used every excuse he can to centralise authority on his own person; his popularity has suffered little for it. He has curtailed judicial powers and independence, has blamed many of the issues that plague the country on outside influence, most commonly George Soros—who has long been a political foe and critic of his—and immigrants, including when the coronavirus first reached the country. Orban continues to be viewed as a hero, in the highest echelons of the European Union but elsewhere, too; his past accomplishments are compelling. There is ample reason why Viktor Orban has been described as “the American right’s favourite strongman”. He has shown a capacity for using any crisis to his ultimate benefit—something the current American president has attempted to emulate, to mixed results.

For the “elected despots” of the European Union, politicking has proven thicker than the blood of those who have viewpoints opposing their own.

His Polish counterpart, Jarosław Kaczyński, is no different. Rather than take a step back from the controversial abortion law that sparked the “Women’s Strike”, Kaczyński’s party has used these protests to draw a line in the sand, polarizing Polish society and enervating the Polish conservatives by painting the conflict not as one against the law itself but rather, as an attack on the Catholic church. The gall of another member of the ruling party PiS (Law and Justice) in “likening the red lightning symbol of the protests to the runes of Nazi Germany’s SS forces” shows the extent to which PiS is willing to stoke the flames of social strife.

For the “elected despots” of the European Union, politicking has proven thicker than the blood of those who have viewpoints opposing their own. The overall theme is the same: They are all nationalists quick to point a finger of blame, unwilling to backtrack. They are—unlike Trump, who ran as one—economic populists, which is where the vast amount of their support comes from. Peter Beinart writes for the NYRB:

“In 2019, Poland’s xenophobic and homophobic Law and Justice party won a dominant election victory in large measure because of its immensely popular payouts to Polish families, which, according to the World Bank, dramatically reduced child poverty. (Law and Justice’s popularity has fallen since then as many Poles have revolted against its draconian efforts to outlaw abortion.) In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has launched a New Deal-style public works program that gives hundreds of thousands of Hungarians government jobs.”

These are social policies that earn no small amount of goodwill, difficult to break despite raising discontent. And—as the Polish ruling party is all too willing to prove—social cohesion is not high in the list of priorities for the democratically elected despots, not when they hold onto the firm belief that they can energize a large enough percent of their populations to continue being reelected to office.

“The people” is not as inclusive a label as we might think; in the eyes of a caudillo, this concept extends only to those who are firm in their support. The opposition is the enemy—this lesson, at least, Trump learned well and early.

Related articles:

Delusive Donald

Will the Refugee Crisis be the Downfall of the EU and its Ideals?

Photo credits

Trump by geralt No attribution required

Viktor Orban by Łukasz Dawidziu CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

People in Groups by Sukanto DebnathlCC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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