Problems Much Deeper Than the Debate About Abortion Deeper Paula Anic the Polish government are equally or even more unpopular with the Polish public. An example is Przemysław Czarnek, the new Minister of Science and Education, who refused to change the content of Polish schoolbooks many of which still have sexist, anti-LGBTQ+, and racist material, supplemented by religious instructions for the schools to follow. The youth behind the ongoing protests is also targeting the houses of far-right activist Kaja Godek and politician Krystyna Pawłowicz who caused controversy after stating their negative views on same-sex marriage and immigration. In addition, the protestors have taken into the Catholic churches throwing leaflets with symbols of the movement to the believers. Protests on the street demanding the abolition of the law regarding the abortion. Poland, Oct 2020. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Silar. change in the law passed by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal swept the nation. The decision to severely restrict access to abortion in a predominantly Catholic country made headlines and ignited a fire. Apart from criminalizing almost all cases of abortion, the new law was supposed to make it impossible to have an abortion even in the case of severe and permanent disability of the fetus. On Oct 22, 2020, protests erupted on the streets of Warsaw, the largest city in Poland. “While I was walking with my friends in the mass, the only thing that I was thinking of was my basic human rights and how they were taking them away from me,” said Gosia Bartczak, a 20-year-old student from the University of Warsaw, one of the many students who were on the front line of the protests in the capital city of Poland. The Women’s Strike (Strajk Kobiet) protests turned out to be the biggest since the end of the revolution during the fall of communism in Poland, 1989. Born in a time when Poland was already part of the European Union, the younger generations hold views which oppose their country’s government and mirror those of their peers around Europe. In the past few years, the voices of the youth were never heard as the Polish government strayed further away from common European values, and even repeatedly threatened to leave the European Union. Banning abortion was the breaking point which brought the majority of the Polish young population to 8 Fall 2020 | AUBG Daily The name of the protest (Strajk Kobiet) on the street poster, Poland, 2020. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Silar. the streets. What they are fighting against runs much deeper than abortion rights - the Polish nation is divided on whether they approve of their leaders or not. “My generation is sick of it. They [the Polish government] are treating citizens like an experiment. They change the judges on the Constitutional court overnight and then allow those people to influence our lives,” Bartczak said. “It’s for our future, the future of Poland. We have to fight for it.” In the 2020 Polish presidential elections, the frequently criticized Andrej Duda won reelection despite his attack on the LGBTQ+ community. Other members of Even abroad, the Polish youth is active in its beliefs. An example of this is Tobiasz Burzyński, who is currently on Erasmus exchange in Tallinn, Estonia, and managed to organize the protest in the city. “Participating in an online protest wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t send a strong enough message, and put the pressure on the government the same way,” Burzyński said. Regardless of the hardships which the Polish people have endured in their recent history, they are not giving up, and only time will tell how far it will get them. For now, they have managed to succeed in the first phase. At the beginning of November, the Prime Minister’s office announced the law will get delayed until they find a new solution to the problem leaving the discussion with an open ending.
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