Warsaw: Protests took place across Poland on Thursday against the country's strict abortion laws.
Groups demonstrated in Warsaw and numerous cities around the country, including in Gdansk, where around 100 chanted and raised red cards.
The protests came on the sixth anniversary of a ruling by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal that made abortion due to fetal defects unconstitutional, banning the most common of the few legal grounds for ending a pregnancy in Poland.
Poland's lower house of parliament on Tuesday voted to allow abortion in case of foetal abnormalities and to decriminalise providing help in getting an abortion, though President Karol Nawrocki has signalled he would block any liberalisation of the law. Under the current law, abortion is only legal in cases involving rape or incest, or when a woman's health or life is at risk.
"I am fed up with the abortion law in our country. It is a draconian law that makes a lot of women suffer. And that, like, puts all the burden of abortion care in Poland on nongovernmental organizations," said 30-year-old protester Aleksandra Laboda
26-year-old protester Aleksandra Maliszewska's anger meanwhile is directed at the current Polish government. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk partly won the 2023 election on a pledge to ease abortion restrictions.
"Three years ago we were going to vote because we were hoping that the new government would change something for us. Unluckily it still hasn't happened, and it doesn't seem like it will change for better in any near future," said Maliszewska, adding that she felt 'disappointed and betrayed'.
