by Bethany Rielly

POLAND’S abortion ban has sparked an “unprecedented” mobilisation of the Polish diaspora in Britain, with hundreds of protesters descending on central London’s Piccadilly Circus on Sunday night.

About 1,000 people gathered, some wearing “blood-stained” dresses and others waving placards reading: “Forced motherhood is female enslavement,” in protest at the far-right government’s latest attack on women’s reproductive rights. 

It was part of a week of action against an October 22 ruling by Poland’s  Constitutional Tribunal that abortion is illegal even when the foetus has severe defects. 

Pregnancy termination is now only allowed in cases of incest and rape. Poland already had some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. 

Hundreds of thousands of women have since taken to the streets in Poland, blockading cities, disrupting church services and organising mass strikes.

Protesters in Britain have targeted Poland’s embassy in central London, with the largest demonstration attracting about 2,000 people. 

Activists have also emblazoned Big Ben and the Tate Modern with images of Poland’s women’s strike as a sign of solidarity.

Leading Polish feminist campaigner Marzena Zukowska told the Morning Star that the scale of resistance has been “unprecedented.”

She said: “You have people who have been frustrated since the Law and Justice party (PiS) came to power in 2015, who have just been seeing their country and democratic values completely gutted on so many different fronts. So people are angry and people are frustrated.” 

The PiS, which has strong ties to Poland’s Catholic Church, has sought to strip away women’s and LGBT rights. 

In 2016, mass protests forced PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski to abandon a proposal to criminalise women seeking abortions.

The latest attack is seen by campaigner Krzsyia Balinska as a political move to distract Poles from their government’s poor handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

“It’s not the first time in history where a pandemic or a political crisis has been used to diminish reproductive rights and women’s rights,” she said. 

Both she and Ms Zukowska said that the recent actions in Britain are a reflection of growing resistance and progressive values among the Polish diaspora.

Over the last five years, a number of British-Polish feminist groups have been formed, including Dziewuchy London, FARSA, KOD UK and Razem — the organisers of the latest actions. 

International solidarity with Poland is important because of the threat of “creeping fascism,” Ms Zukowska said.  

“We have to be careful not to pathologise Poland as an exceptionally more anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ country, because the far right shares strategies and tactics and campaigns across borders,” she explained. 

Ms Balinska said: “I think that a threat to women’s rights anywhere on the planet is a threat to women’s rights everywhere.”