Analysis | Roe v. Wade controversy parallels Poland abortion ban
Women continue to protest Poland’s Oct. 22 tightening of abortion legislation, parallel to threats of overturning Roe v. Wade with three pro-life justices occupying the Supreme Court. WikiCommons
Hordes of passionate women feverishly continue to swarm the streets of Poland – in Warsaw, Gdansk and Poznan – in continuation of a nationwide strike against the Polish government’s Oct. 22 decision to further restrict what are already considered some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. Women have taken to more symbolic means of protests by vandalizing church exteriors and intervening in mass services, some even costumed as characters from “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Efforts continue despite retribution from the police force and alt-right radical nationalists in the form of tear gassing and violence, as seen in the city of Katowice.
“At the end of the day, peaceful protesting isn’t always going to work, and sometimes (being more aggressive) is the push you need to get people to start paying attention,” said Victoria Mas, the treasurer of Chapman Feminists and a junior sociology major. “We can replace a business and we can replace a building, but if you lose a person, you can’t replace that.”
The surge of outward feminism in Poland through protest was referred to by The New York Times as the biggest protest the country has seen since the fall of communism in 1989. The ruling on a near-total abortion ban is still up in the air, since a ban failed to be published in a government journal by the deadline of Nov. 2 to formally take effect.
“In feminism, there’s this concept of coalitional politics, which is what intersectionality is all about,” said C.K. Magliola, the near 12-year director of Chapman’s Women’s Studies minor. “Feminists of color have always argued for coalitional politics, meaning diverse groups of people – even though they’re different from each other – working toward a common cause. When you have a coalition, that’s when activism is the most effective.”
The new Polish legislation would deem abortion illegal, even in the case of life-threatening fetal defects, which compromises 98% of the abortions that currently take place in Poland. This ban would criminalize abortion almost entirely, except in the extreme case of a threat to a mother’s life or in the case of conception from rape. Between 80,000 and 120,000 Polish women already are forced to seek an abortion abroad based on current national restrictions, and this number will likely only increase with more barriers to abortion accessibility.
“Nothing good comes from removing a person’s ability to make their own personal health decisions, especially when it’s for political reasons,” wrote Nichole Ramirez, senior vice president of communication and donor donations for Planned Parenthood of Orange County, in an email to The Panther. “What actually decreases abortion isn’t executive actions or politics, (but) access to comprehensive, honest sex education and access to contraception.”
Additionally, Polish doctors can refuse to provide contraception to women on religious grounds under the new legislation, following in line with the country’s close affiliation with the Catholic Church. Ramirez criticized the abstinence-only approach, arguing this method of education is ultimately harmful to women due to its direct correlation to increased unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unsafe or illegal abortions.
The fight for bodily autonomy in Poland draws threatening parallels to efforts to undermine current women’s freedoms in the United States, a precedent set under Roe v. Wade (1973), which finds that abortion is legal before the third trimester, though states are able to impose their individual restrictions on the law. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) served as a major catalyst in the pro-choice movement, eliminating unecessary burdens on women seeking abortions. It allowed minors and married women to access these services without, respectively, parental consent or notifying their husbands.
Planned Parenthood currently serves as the largest provider of sex education in the United States, according to Ramirez, with at least one abortion clinic in every U.S. state. However, states like Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota have eliminated all but one abortion clinic in their respective states as a combattant to accessibility. Magliola told The Panther of attempts to restrict abortion by criminalizing it.
“It’s meant to be a deterraent and underscore the ways in which abortion is (considered) murder,” Magliola said. “It’s a way of shifting the discourse to criminalize what should be protected as a freedom.”
Alabama officials further presented a near-full abortion ban in May 2019 that effectively eliminated almost all reasoning for abortion as legal, even in cases of rape or incest. The legislation is backed by a fetal heartbeat ban enacted in nine states, which criminalizes abortions once a heartbeat is detected – as soon as six to eight weeks into the pregnancy. The limitation can appear superflousuous to many pro-choice supporters, as 90% of women who receive abortions undergo abortion during the first trimester anyway, with only 1.2% of abortions happening past 21 weeks of gestation and usually for medically severe purposes.
“(Abortion bans are) really frustrating because I don’t really understand how somebody’s political affiliation could be an excuse to say they don’t think their mother, their wife or their daughter doesn’t deserve rights to their body,” Mas said.
Access to what is deemed by many women as a medical necessity has become increasingly threatened in the wake of the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose pro-life stance parallels that of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch. All three justices were confirmed under the President Donald Trump administration following his commitment to pack the court with pro-life justices at the final presidential debate in 2016.
The New York Times argued that, if efforts to undermine Roe v. Wade persist, the result could be 100,000 fewer legal abortions a year, not accounting for the number of abortions performed illegally.
“Once again, women’s health care is being used as a political football,” Ramirez wrote. “With the addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, we may bear to witness the most precipitous fall that women’s rights have suffered in modern history.”
The reality is 25% of American women will receive an abortion in their lifetime before the age of 45, and as of 2011, 42% of women with an unintended pregnancy choose to terminate their pregnancies. These statistics also encompass a clear racial and socioeconomic divide, with studies identifying that women living in poverty have a rate of unintended pregnancy five times higher than those with middle or high incomes. Black women are also twice as likely as white women to have an unintended pregnancy.
Ramirez added that access to abortion is increasingly important for Black women, as a study by Planned Parenthood outlines the steeper mortality rate for Black women overall. The death rate among pregnancy-related complications for Black women is 3.5 times the rate of white women.
As the existential threat of the overturning of Roe v. Wade becomes a more plausible possibility with pro-life court packing, the end goal becomes clear: the elimination of this precedent would lead to wide-scale criminalization of women seeking health care, specifically women in marginalized communities already at a medical disadvantage.
“The vast majority of people in the United States, especially the majority of women, want Roe v. Wade to stay in place and want these state restrictions to be outlawed, yet the government fails to represent the will of the people,” Magliola said. “It’s undemocratic. What are politicians for if not to represent the will of the people?”