The struggle for abortion rights in Poland, and who killed it

“On the Barricades” s05e16

This week on “On the Barricades” hosts Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat are speaking with guest Dorota Niemitz, an activist and political commentator of Polish origin. In this second episode they discuss the massive, although anti-climactic, social movement for abortion rights in Poland in recent years. What exactly was the legal context of the attack on abortion rights by Kaczyński in 2015-6, and then in 2020, which sparked the protests? Why, when abortion rights are so basic a part of the democratic rights supposedly guaranteed (especially in the EU), are they still contested this way? And when a mass movement with far reaches across social strata was produced in unity against such a move, why did it fail? Like discussed in the last episode, there is an utter void of leftist leadership in Poland. In its place, the pseudo-left identity politics liberal crowd co-opt the movement and put it to bed.