WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Crowds of protesters across Poland vented their anger on Friday at a ruling by a top court that ruled abortion of fetuses with congenital defects unconstitutional, effectively curtailing one of Europe’s toughest abortion laws.
The hundreds of protesters who gathered in many cities defied a nationwide ban on gatherings related to COVID-19.
Police vans and units in riot gear were dispatched to guard the Warsaw home of the leader of Poland’s right-wing ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. An angry crowd confronted the cordon with chants of “This is war” and vulgar calls for the ruling team to resign. Officials used megaphones to warn people that the gathering was illegal.
Demonstrators also marched through other major cities including Kraków, Wroclaw, Szczecin and Katowice.
A protest also took place in front of Kaczynski’s house on Thursday evening after the constitutional court had presented its verdict on the abortion law. The police used tear gas and arrested 15 people.
Opposition parties in Poland, the European Union Commissioner for Human Rights and international human rights organizations have criticized the court’s decision as violating women’s rights. It leaves a pregnancy that endangers a woman’s health or life, or that results from rape or any other illegal act, as the only legal basis for an abortion.
READ MORE: Poland’s top court rules out abortions due to fetal defects
The decision will come into effect when it is officially published in the Journal of Laws, which can happen within days or weeks.
Critics noted that the ruling came at a time when street action is banned. Previous attempts to restrict abortion since Kaczynski’s Law and Justice Party came to power in 2015 have been scrapped after mass street protests across the country.
The Constitutional Court’s decision came in response to a motion by right-wing MPs who argued that terminating a pregnancy due to fetal birth defects – the most commonly cited reason for legal abortions in Poland – violates a constitutional provision that calls for the protection of the life of every individual.
The court agreed with the legislature that an abortion based on the health of a fetus constitutes unlawful discrimination. The opinion, endorsed by 11 of the 13 judges on the government-controlled court, held that terminating a pregnancy because of birth defects amounted to eugenics – a 19th-century notion of genetic selection used in experiments by German Nazis.
Health Ministry figures for 2019 show that most of the 1,110 legal abortions performed in Poland last year were due to fetal genetic defects such as Down syndrome or physical defects.
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