(Bloomberg) -- Polish women have taken to the streets against one of Europe’s strictest abortion laws in the latest challenge to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose long-awaited attempts to loosen restrictions have floundered just seven months into his term.
More than a thousand people protested outside the Sejm, or parliament building, in Warsaw on Tuesday where they were faced off by a small number of conservative activists.
“We had hopes that this would all end with the latest election, as the parties were very vocal in being on the side of women,” said Anna Zabielska, 41, a protester from Warsaw. “There were precise pledges and they are not fulfilled.”
The protest highlights growing disillusion with the Tusk-led coalition which has sought to undo many of the legislative changes made by the former nationalist government.
But earlier this month the alliance, which brings together parties across the political spectrum, failed to pass a law to decriminalize abortion after a conservative junior partner refused to support the measure.
Poland’s nationalist president Andrzej Duda has said that he will veto any bill to liberalize Poland’s abortion laws, a stance which is likely to ensure the prominence of the issue during next year’s presidential election.
“It has been 12 years since I started to fight for women’s reproductive rights,” said Katarzyna Malyszko, 32, a movie director from Warsaw. “We can’t go to the hospital with the guarantee that our life will be the priority and we have the right to decide about ourselves.”
Three years ago, thousands of women took to the streets across the country in freezing temperatures, demonstrating against a near-total ban on abortion. The Women’s Strike became Poland’s largest anti-government protest movement since the collapse of communism in 1989.
It contributed to a collapse in support for the ruling nationalist Law & Justice party, whose policies had alienated swathes of women voters. The party lost its majority in parliamentary elections last October.
We Failed
During that electoral campaign, Tusk pledged to dismantle nearly a decade of nationalist rule, promising to table a bill allowing legal abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. When his coalition took power, Polish women expected swift action to restore their rights.
But the path to lift abortion restrictions has not been an easy one. Tusk had to strike a balance between his election pledge to Poland’s women and the need to maintain unity among the three parties of the ruling coalition.
“If I hear voices like yours telling me that I failed in this matter, then yes — you have the right to think that we failed,” Tusk told reporters before the protest on Tuesday.
An opinion poll carried out by United Survey days before the vote in July showed that 58% of the ruling coalition’s electorate was in favor of the draft bill that sought to scrap criminal liability — including potential prison sentences of up to three years — for those helping women seeking to terminate pregnancies.
The Polish People’s Party, or PSL, and its leader Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, who is currently Poland’s minister of defense, were particular targets for the protesters’ ire. On banners, they compared the conservative coalition partner to the country’s former ruling Law and Justice party.
Tusk said that he would continue his efforts to convince the Polish People’s Party to change their stance, but didn’t have high hopes of success. Lawmakers’ efforts continue as a specialized parliamentary committee is currently debating three remaining pieces of legislation, including a proposed nationwide referendum on legalizing abortion.
Whatever the parliamentary arithmetic, Poland’s Minister of Family, Labor and Social Policy Agnieszka Dziemanowicz-Bak said she will submit the defeated bill on decriminalization to parliament again.
“We will not fold the umbrellas,” declared Dziemanowicz-Bak, referring to the symbol of the protest movement. “We will strive for what is the European standard.”
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