girl with rainbow hair
Illustration which I started to work on to draw something colorfull, but deciced to finish it in theme of Strajk Kobiet (Women's Strike) in Poland. There are massive protests since 22th of October. This is the date when Constitutional Court manipulated by ruling party (PiS) decided to ban abortion on grounds of foetal defects. The law before was one of the strictest in whole Europe - abortion was available in 3 conditions: in cases of rape or incest, if the mother's life is at risk and foetal defects. Legal abortion in Poland was in about 98% because of foetal defects. There was about 1000 legal abortion in Poland each year, but there are about 100-200k abotions in our country. Polish women goes to Chech, Slovakia, Germany or Holland to do abortion.
The decition about banning abortion in 1993 was done without consent of the people, it was the compromise between new democratic goverment and church which was thought as a filar of polish nation. Since then goverment was using abortion law as a cover to push through new laws that wouldn't be easly accepted by the people. We always knew that this day might come, especially after Black Monday protests 4 years ago when politicians wanted to tighten the abortion ban, but women protested and politicians decided to vote against new law. Few weeks ago - they've finally succeded.
About 70% of pols don't want to ban abortion. Young people are dissatisfacted towards the church to lobby for tightening of the abortion law. People standing behind this change are saying already that they want to ban abortion at all causes, they even want to ban divorces... Which might seem unbelieveble but so was banning the abortion which is already very much unavailable for poor. About 90% of rapes aren't reported to the police, almost 70% of rape cases are redeemed, each year there were only 1-2 cases of legal abortion in ground of rape so this change actually ban aborion at all.
This situation maked women and men go on the streets in the middle of pandemic - it started the biggest strikes in 30 years (which eventually leaded to overthrow communism). And this illustration is my solidarity with all protestors!