Poland limits the right to abortion | They stop …

People wearing green scarves and masks with the red ray – which identifies the struggle for voluntary termination of pregnancy in Poland – arrived near the court to protest (Photo) the measure which restricts the decision-making rights of pregnant women. At least 14 people were arrested on the second night of protests rejecting the promulgation of the court sentence.

“We will meet here because this state believes it can appropriate our freedom,” Marta Lempart, one of the founders of Huelga de Mujeres, one of the popular forces who supports the right to decide, told the crowd. In October of last year, the Constitutional Court (TC) declared “unconstitutional” ILE due to fetal malformation. The measure had to be suspended due to the rejection which led to mass protests that lasted for weeks in the streets of Warsaw, the Polish capital. At that time, an estimate 150,000 people (the biggest demonstration since the solidarity movement with the workers in the 1980s) They have taken to the streets to oppose measures that restrict the right to abortion.

“The state wants to further limit rights, risk lives and condemn them to torture” said Adam Bodnar, a human rights defender in Poland after the almost total ban on legal termination of pregnancy (ILE). The judgment of the Constitutional Court eliminated ILE in case of fetal malformation, considered one of the three exceptions allowing access to an abortion in the country. According to data from the Ministry of Health, 98 percent of 1,100 abortions practiced in 2019 they were due to a fetal malformation.

Almost 90 years ago, Poland pioneered the legalization of rape abortion in Europe, with the enactment of the ruling it has become one of the laws that most restricts the right to decide. . According to official country data, some two thousand legal abortions each year, however, this figure contrasts with that provided by feminist organizations who believe that the figure is a hundred times higher – almost 200,000 – if we counted those carried out clandestinely or abroad.