Poland Abortion Ban

In Poland, on 28 October 2020, the countries’ constitutional tribunal announced a ban on abortion. They have since delayed implementation of this controversial court ruling  after it prompted the largest protests since the fall of communism.  About one hundred thousand protesters took to the streets of the Polish capital, Warsaw, in the largest demonstration of popular anger directed against Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party.

In a separate protest, activists called a “women’s strike” that attracted over 400,000 people to protests in over 400 towns and cities across the central European nation. As it is, Poland has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, abortions were only allowed to be legally performed if the woman’s life or health were endangered by the continuation of pregnancy, if the pregnancy was a result of a criminal act or if there was a high probability of a severe and irreversible fetal impairment.

In October, Poland officials ruled that terminations due to foetal defects were unconstitutional and by doing so, they have tried to remove one of the few legal grounds for ending a pregnancy. This is a massive blow to women’s rights and if you are a woman, and even if you are not Polish, you should be outraged and very worried about this new law. This is my take on it;

For generations the conversation about abortions has been reduced to two sides; Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. As women, we have been told that we need to choose between these two sides and am here to tell you that this is a manipulation with one goal; to divide us. 

Can we just get this out of the way - NO ONE WANTS TO KILL BABIES! 

NO ONE. 

So moving on from that let me take you back - throughout history women’s role in society was to be pretty and make babies. If a woman was unable to fulfill her role as baby maker, she was tossed aside and an upgraded, usually younger, version was found for the kings and men alike who wanted heirs. Someone, ideally a son, to carry their name and the women’s role was to produce and raise such heirs.

That’s it.

Until women started demanding equality. The right to work, to vote, to do what men were allowed to do and still, to this day we do not have full equality, there are still so many things women can’t do that men can but it’s going be too long for me to list them so I’ll just say this: The main reason there still is a gap between men and women is not because of physical strength, mental agility or different hormones, it is one thing and one thing alone:

BABIES.

From conception and even contraception, to pregnancy, delivery and all the responsibilities that come with having children - it is still, in 2020, a woman’s job. Many men today do take a much more active part, many of them do it all from changing nappies to night feeds BUT it’s still the women who are “juggling” it’s still the women who do a little bit more. The excuse that they give us when there are gaps, like the pay gap; “Well, you took time off to raise your family. You can’t expect to get paid as much as Tom because he was pulling 14 hours shifts when you were home playing mommy.”

THIS is the issue.

You see until children are considered men’s responsibility - just as much as they are women’s, there will always be a gap. Things are changing, slowly. But when lawmakers take away a woman’s right to end an unwanted pregnancy, what they are effectively doing is reducing her to a baby-making machine and sending us back to a time that no woman wants to go back to. 

If you still think that abortions are about killing babies and not about women’s rights, I just want to ask you one question okay, because it’s the only question we should be asking and that is; 

Do you think that if men were the ones getting pregnant we would even be having this conversation?

The answer is no, we wouldn’t. Because no man would ever agree to anybody telling him what he can or can’t do with his body. Men wouldn’t even take the pill because it made them moody, so do you think they would agree to carry a pregnancy that they didn’t want for nine months and then spend the rest of their lives caring for a child they did not want to care for in the first place? No.  

Women’s bodies have been stripped from autonomy from the dawn of time. So much so that we don’t even see it. We are used to being penetrated, pulled, poked, prodded that we have completely lost a sense of ownership over our own bodies. 

And those who are trying to make us think that this is a debate about religion, morals, killing babies are doing it to distract you from the fact that they are infringing on your freedom as a human being and the only reason they are doing it is because you are a woman and we are so used to it