The nationwide strike and anti government protests in Poland

People across Poland stayed off work and crowds gathered for a seventh straight day of street protests on Wednesday in a mass outpouring of anger at a high court ruling that bans abortions in cases of congenitally damaged foetuses. Protesters in Warsaw marched from the office of Ordo Iuris, a conservative group that has pushed for a full abortion ban, to the parliament building, which was surrounded by police in riot gear. Large crowds also filled the streets in other major cities, including Krakow and Wroclaw. Poland’s most powerful politician, ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, lashed out at opposition legislators, accusing them of inciting people to protest during the pandemic.

“You are destroying Poland,” Mr Kaczynski told them. “You are exposing a lot of people to death, you are criminals.” He said in the past that pregnancies involving even foetuses that are badly damaged and have no chance of survival outside the womb should “still end up in a birth, so that the child can be baptized, buried, have a name”. On Sunday, women entered Polish churches on Sunday to disrupt Masses, confronted priests with obscenities and spray-painted church buildings. Mr Kaczynski accused protesters of seeking “to destroy Poland” late on Tuesday and called on his party’s supporters to defend churches “at any cost” On Sunday Christians surrounded churches to defend them. Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said 76 people have been detained in connection with the protests at churches and prosecutors are carrying out proceedings in 101 cases. Polish President Andrzej Duda, who is in isolation after testing positive for Covid-19, said last week that he supported the court ruling.

His daughter Kinga Duda, appointed as an unpaid advisor to her father on social issues, said on Wednesday that she could not accept it. Kinga Duda said that any woman carrying a foetus that could die within moments of birth should be allowed to decide what to do since she will be the one “to face the consequences of her decision for the rest of her life”.