Coordinated protests in Poland and the whole world against total abortion ban

Um, maybe the banner on it would have given you a hint. :-)

The government, like the one before it, has done a lot of crap and needs to be smashed. This government has mostly done harm by attacking liberal lifestyle issues, the former one by attacking the poor, workers' rights and the retirement age. The European liberal community is more offended by the former than the latter, so they are mobilized. There is a similar tendency here where the Freedom House supported movement for "democracy" managed to mobilze lots of people in defense of the undefendable Constitutional Tribunal, as if "democracy" was at stake. They forget to tell you that prior to the change of government, the former government rushed in like 100 acts in the course of a week or two and one was changing things about the Tribunal to stack it. But when the former government did that, not a word.

Great! Thanks for the photo.
ln general, it was very good for our local reality, with protests all around the country and solidarity protests in many cities around the world. Of course not really a proper strike, although thousands of people did take off work and that was big stuff here. Hope it is not the end of the protests but just the beginning.

All bills that are not rejected outright go to commission for opinions and the commission voted to reject it last night but tomorrow it goes to the Parliament to vote. It's pretty clear that it wasn't there to be passed but so a new "compromise" could be proposed and I am betting the new proposal, that doesn't necessarily have to come now, will be to ban abortion in cases of defects of the fetus. BTW the Guardian is not always a good source of infotmation , just to point out.

The citizen's bill to ban abortion failed, 352 votes to 58.

Probably nothing else will happen for now, because the climate is bad for this kind of shit. But as l said before, this was a citizen's initiative and some in the government were probably hoping to get a another compromise, but l doubt they will approach that now. Simply too many people were pissed.

Abortion is legal in a few cases: rape, incest, when the life of the mother is threatened or when the fetus is seriously deformed. Of course this is sometimes theory because doctors sometimes make it hard for people to get even legal abortions. (They refuse to do the procedure.) This also gives the question of abortion a serious class aspect, as women with more money have generally better access to both contraception and abortion since it can be performed abroad.

Probably 150,000 people took part in protests throughout Poland, which is a very good turnout for this country. Reports about 6 million women going on strike though are completely inaccurate - first because the participation in this was not that massive and second, because this was not exactly a strike. The reason is because the idea was to take off work, but only part of the people did this. From these, many had the permission of the bosses and some liberal bosses closed down their small businesses. Some artistic institutions suppported this action. Some people took a couple of hours off work and protested. So hardly a proper strike, but yes, some thousands probably did not go to work. Again, it was easy to notice a class issue. There were a lot of students and people with professional jobs that could take a day off on the Warsaw protests. Maybe in some other places the composition was different.

l can say that many people were very happy about the protests and felt enpowered by them and are happy with the results. l am pretty sure the bill wouldn't have passed anyway, but much better that people went on the streets and protested and feel they were heard.

To answer an earlier question/remark, there are no real reproductive rights in Poland. This is something that requires an organized campaign to fight for an, unfortunately, over the years, this hasn't done to the extent necessary. The citizen's petition to introduce the total ban produced almost .5 million signatures. A counter-proposal calling for the liberalization of access to abortion, up to 12 weeks, was signed by 150,000 people. Unlike the first citizen's proposal, this one was thrown out and not sent to the commission for any opinion. This was one of the factors that infuriated women.

These protests were an important step but are threatened with being a one-off action, unless concerted effort and long-term organization, something that is often lacking here, is made.

Coordinated strike action of any kind is lacking in this country, so we hope that this situation will change. However such actions will not change much in this regard since the aspects of coordinated action in the workplaces and direct struggle were not really seen and these are what are missing in the landscape of the society. ln addition, there were elements of serious recouperation of the notion of a strike by the bourgeoise, something which was also an issue with the nobleman who was pushing for an immigrants' strike in the UK.

Protest though is good in and of itself, especially if there is a sense that it has achieved its purpose. Thus perhaps some who were never inclined to protest will be more inclined in the future.

An article is needed given the fact that some serious misconceptions have been spread about what actually happened. The other day the Guardian published an article claiming 7 million women went on strike. lt is not unusual for people here to wildly exaggerate such things, but this was really wild. Also there seem to be people around the world who are under the impression that there was a "mass downing of tools" or something to the effect, by working women. The reality is a little different.

Now what is needed is a serious push for abortion rights, not just a defensive protest and keeping the so-called "compromise".

BTW, l don't really believe these actions had one "leader" or "iniciator" although one women is promoting herself as this. (Surely she is among the iniciators.) You can read in English.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/news-features/how-the-women-of-poland-pulled-off-their-massive-nationwide-protest-20161010-gryuwq.html

Now, about people "downing tools" and so on, the first stinking thing about this is that the self-processed iniciator is an activist for women's rights - but also a neoliberal and a boss. l don't know about the working conditions at her company, but construction workers are generally fucked over. lt gets better - a gentrifier. Her firm build luxury housing for rich people in a building that had a series on mysterious fires in it.

This doesn't have much influence on the significance of the protests and the fact that thousands participated, but it does have significance that the person who probably thought to call a "strike" is a boss.

This interview is much more accurate than a lot of stuff in this British press, although it omits the fact that the law was a civic initiative and could be understood otherwise. However, it seems that it is written without deeper analysis of the political situation or of an underlying class issue. Two women here are mentioned as initiators of the strike - both are bosses and come from a certain political background. Unfortunately, some of this played an underlying role and, although the overwhelming majority of participants came as non-aligned individuals, there was a certain above-the-scenes political orchestration from the elites. These people are the beneficiaries of neoliberal policies, or received funding from the worst neo-liberal politicians and in the case of the owner of the construction company, her organization was funded by Freedom House, a ClA front. Unfortunately, the interviewee repeats a few assumptions that come down from the political line of this political segment, which has unfortunately had too much influence on the consciousness of people, trying to move people into struggles for "democracy" (sic) and "rights" and detract attention from the increasing clashes of class interests in the country.

l am confused by the question a bit. "To table a bill" means to suspend work on it - actually, the old bill, which women were protesting against was effectively thrown out. A new citizen's petition was sent last week. This new petition also bans abortion, but does not criminalize women who have them. lt was submitted by the Polish Federation of Movements to Defend Life. ln other words, an anti-abortion federation. The Commission on Petitions should then decide whether or not this one will be read in Parliament. ln general, the government had promised that all such petitions would be read, but they through out one collected to liberalize abortion.

As l may have mentioned, there are probably plans by the governing party to introduce a new bill which would ban abortions in case of deformation of the fetus. Or at least leading members of the part would like to do that. So far, nothing has been introduced and there is contradictory information about whether it will happen.

As far as new protests, there are the usual issues - the increased involvement of the neoliberal opposition and it looks as if the initiators are small business women. l will have to check more into things and see how it is developing. ln any case, this is still being done outside of organized labor and seems more of the liberal activist milieu are involved. l would be interested if there is a lot of grassroots participation or labour.

Besides this issue, I think the current social landscape in Poland is very complicated, which leads to confusion and at times misunderstandings.

One of the issues not discussed here really are notions of democracy. Actually, I am not a defender of bourgeoise democracy at all but the " defence of democracy" is often used here as a notion raised in this struggle. I find it to be problematic. The fact is, there is some active support for the ban. There is probably less support for liberalization. But a majority support for the status quo, which is a near ban anyway. It is no "compromise". Bourgeois representative democracy assumes that majorities decide things, even though that's a farce. The underlying problem is the influence of the church. People should be attacking it with as much rigor as anything else. But that's not happening.

The last thing is, if you do support "democracy", then one has to support the right of citizens to propose a bill- which by the way, doesn't exist everywhere, so in theory, Poland's system is rather advanced. But of course, being representative democracy not based in real instructions and mandates but speaking on behalf of people who gave an open mandate, anything can happen to your bill. Hence, and maybe this will be an unpopular view, I don't see anything wrong with the fact that the civic bill went to Commission - but I do see a huge problem that the abortion liberalization bill did not.

Actually, we have some experience with it because despite being against government I've both submitted a petition and been on a Commission, so I know how it looks first hand and how politicians manipulate and distort. I think we need new laws and legal abortion but I don't think any petitions will solve this particular issye . Protests need to be taken out of the domain of the elites and radicalized. But foremost we need long term work to counter the influence of the church. Unless that is done, not much will change in this society.