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Women’s Strike: We Will Defeat You With Love
Professor Andrzej Rychard, director of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, talks to Witold Żygulski.
For several weeks now, a wave of protests has been sweeping across Poland after the Constitutional Tribunal's ruling practically prohibitioning obortion due to malformations and dmage to the fetus. What kind of impact has the Wemen's Strike had on the situation in Poland?
In my opinion, it is, or at least is meant to be, a real breakthrough. We have a few features of this situation that may not yet qualify it as revolutionary, but it comes close. First of all, there is quite a strong social mobilization resulting from the frustration of women’s communities. However, this frustration does not only concern women and does not only come down to issues related to abortion. Although this is the main catalyst of the protests, the Women’s Strike has a wider dimension. It results from various types of restrictions on freedom. This process is based on the defense of liberal values, contradicting the argument that Polish society is rather conservative and does not like liberalism. However, the second necessary factor that could lead to some fundamental systemic change is the existence of a program of changes. Frustration itself is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The protesters must have some model of the future to pursue. Does this model exist? In my opinion, yes. The Women’s Strike movement has managed to revive a slogan that appeared to have become passé: the anti-PiS slogan. It has gained new relevance. Today this is enough for the first element of a program. The anti-PiS idea has come to mean a desire and respect for freedom, liberal and European values, and respect for individual rights.
ON OCTOBER 22ND, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, unrecognized by a large part of the Polish legal community and European legal institutions because of the illegal procedure of appointing judges, ruled that the provisions of the socalled abortion compromise in force since 1993, allowing for termination of pregnancy in three cases (rape or incest, threatening the mother’s life or stating that the fetus has been damaged or malformed) are not consistent with the Constitution in the third point, legalizing the “eugenic practice” and depriving the unborn child of protection of human dignity, which constitutes discrimination.
The decision of the CT has provoked unprecedented street protests across the country. The participants spoke of a disgraceful attack on women’s freedom. The demonstrations, conducted under the aegis of the
Photo by PAP
Finally, the third element necessary for the protests to have the power to introduce systemic changes, is some form of political instrumentation. This is not yet present in the Women’s Strike, it is still missing. At present the protests are not accompanied by the organization of anti-PiS political groups or forces. This is a task more for the political environment than for the protesters themselves, although we must be aware that we are dealing with a certain distancing. On one hand, opposition politicians do not want to openly join in the street protests, because they don’t want, cynically speaking, to capitalize on them quickly and brutally for their own interests. On the other hand, the protesters are not seeking too much political representation yet. But if the Women’s Strike is really to lead to liberal systemic change, such a political representation is essential. This is, of course, a task for today’s opposition in the broadest sense. They should come up with proposals for the protesters, use the protests as a kind of vehicle for systemic change. It would have to take the form of a program agreement of the opposition parties, which would not have to mean a formal coalition or a joint stand in elections. They would have to create a new political entity, existing primarily in the sphere of the language of communication. The opposition movements, both parliamentary and non-parliamentary, can work out a catalog of necessary changes together, while maintaining their differences. Ideological agreement can be left for later, but they have to let public opinion know that it the Women’s Strike must acquire its political brand. Women’s Strike, continue to this day, with the participation of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.
To this day the verdict of CT has not been published, i.e. it has not formally entered into force. The President proposed the possibility of abortion in case of “lethal defects” of the embryo. The case caused a deep internal conflict within the ruling party and reopened a sharp ideologi-
can be worked out. In short, and using marketing terminology, cal discussion.
MEPs condemn Polish law
The European Parliament adopted a resolution on November 26 criticising the ban on the right to abortion in Poland.
In a resolution adopted with 455 votes to 145 and 71 abstentions, Parliament says that the ruling of 22 October by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal to make abortion illegal in cases involving severe and irreversible fetal defects “puts women’s health and lives at risk”, as most legal abortions in the country are performed on those grounds. Banning that option, which accounted for 96% of legal pregnancy terminations in Poland in 2019 (1,074 out of 1,110), would lead to an increase in “unsafe, clandestine and life-threatening abortions”, MEPs warn.
The text notes that the decision was made by “judges who are elected by and are fully dependent on politicians from the ruling coalition led by the Law and Justice Party (PiS)”.
Parliament underscored that, in line with the European Court of Human Rights’ case law, restrictive abortion laws violate women’s human rights. MEPs agreed that unhindered and timely access to reproductive health services and respect for women’s reproductive autonomy and decision-making is critical to protecting women’s human rights and gender equality.
Women’s rights are fundamental rights, stated the Chamber, recalling that the EU institutions and the member states are legally obliged to uphold and protect them. MEPs pointed out that Polish medical professionals are increasingly invoking the conscience clause, even when asked to prescribe contraceptives, or to prevent access to prenatal screening. Thousands of Polish women are forced to travel abroad every year to access a health service as essential as abortion, further endangering their health and putting their well-being at risk, they added.
MEPs expressed their support and solidarity with Polish citizens, in particular women and LGBTI+ persons who “despite the public health risks, took to the streets to protest against grave restrictions on their fundamental freedoms and rights”. They note that the ruling was made when there were severe restrictions in place to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, “impeding any proper democratic debate”.
The text condemned the excessive and disproportionate use of force and violence against protesters by law enforcement forces and others such as far-right nationalistic groups.
According to Parliament, this ruling is “yet another example of the political takeover of the judiciary and the systemic collapse of the rule of law” in Poland. MEPs asked the Commission to assess the unlawful composition of the Constitutional Tribunal. According to the Parliament, the Tribunal’s composition constitutes grounds for challenging its rulings and thus its ability to uphold the Polish Constitution. The Council, for its part, should address this and other allegations of violations of fundamental rights in Poland in the framework of the Article 7(1) proceedings.
The Interview Continues:
In your opinion, who on the Polish political scene can best use the popularity of the current protests to their advantage?
I think that it is high time opposition politicians stopped thinking in terms of the success of a particular group, and started leveling out their divisions. This is supported by another extremely important factor: the erosion of the government camp. It enables any pressure put on by the broadly understood anti-authority front to win an advantage. The opposition does not have to show much unity, because those in power are destroying their own unity. The ruling United Right has come a long way from the monolith of a few years ago. There is also a visible leadership crisis; even many devoted supporters of the Law and Justice party, as evidenced by research, believe that Jarosław Kaczyński should leave the leader’s seat. The system of power is beginning to lose its legitimacy; the institutional changes remain, but their normative basis is already being questioned. Faith in the effectiveness of the ruling camp’s actions, such as the current quarrel over the European Union budget, is weaker.
I usually avoid the analogy between what is happening today and the period of the decline of communism, but if we look at these events in general terms, we can see a similar decline of the authoritarian system. In 1980, we did some research on the conflict between Solidarity and the Polish United Workers’ Party [PZPR, the communist party which was then in power] in factories. During the strikes in the summer of 1980, we saw that the conflict line ran very low, at the foreman level. Subsequent research, carried out just before the imposition of martial law on Dec. 13, 1981, showed that these borders had gone up, and the world of the communist “them” had begun to shrink rapidly. The authorities reacted to this, and the internal erosion of the communist camp led to martial law. Later I observed a similar growing trend at the end of the 1980s; I did not believe at the time that this unwanted system would collapse, but research showed the collapse of faith in the system’s
Photo by PAP
legitimacy in the eyes of PZPR members themselves. They in-
creasingly talked about allowing the opposition to exist, about pluralism of trade unions, etc. This delegation of power led to the elections on June 4, 1989 and the fall of communism.
In my opinion, the fundamental question facing Poland today is: If the systemic breakthrough is close, and I believe it is, will the reaction of the authorities be closer to Dec. 13, 1981 or June 4, 1989?
But is resolving the situation by force at all realistic today?
No, of course not. The comparison with martial law goes much too far. The question is whether the authorities will try to find a model of agreement or whether they will continue to penalize the protests. In 1989, people generally believed that the strong Solidarity movement had defeated the weak communists. This was not the case; studies by Polish and American sociologists show that Solidarity was already much weaker than in the early 1980s, but the communist party was even weaker. It was therefore an encounter and conflict between weak partners. Today the power system in Poland is visibly eroded and is similarly weak, and the civic awakening is a fact. Therefore, I believe that system changes are fully possible and we can talk about a breakthrough situation.
Can the Women’s Strike movement introduce some new value to Polish politics, or will it be absorbed, sooner or later, by one of the opposition forces - the Left, the Civic Coalition or Szymon Hołownia’s Poland 2050 movement?
It is very difficult to say whether this protest movement can be squeezed into the existing political framework. The Women’s Strike brings many new elements. It is based on slogans invented a long time ago - the defense of individual freedom and
human rights - but as far as its form is concerned, the movement contains many new features, such as protesting without aggression. The forms of often excellent humor accompanying the demonstrations on posters, in memes and protest slogans, are also worth noting and emphasizing. Therefore, there is growing support for the Women’s Strike in social media, a kind of humor community is being created. It is like a movement of families against fanatics, in which families with children go for walks and publicly reclaim slogans about community, family or Catholic morality, taking them away from PiS. Right-wing nationalist slogans are publicly ridiculed, but without exaggerated aggression. One of the slogans of the Women’s Strike is “We will defeat you with love.” This is definitely a new element; the question is, though, what place there might be for it in the Polish political structure.
