2024-10-04 18:07:48
The three leaders of the “<a href="https://time.news/disappointment-appears-among-the-youth-of-the-new-old-poland-international/" title="Disappointment appears among the youth of the new old Poland | International”>Women’s Strike” – a series of mass protests at the end of 2020 against the almost complete ban on abortions imposed in Poland – were found not guilty today by a court in Warsaw, the Polish news agency PAP reported, quoted by BTA.
Marta Lempart, Klementina Sukhanov and Agnieszka Cheredecka-Fabin were put on trial after a prosecutor charged them with “threatening public health” and “creating an epidemiological threat” by organizing demonstrations at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in October, November and December 2020
The nationwide protests were organized by the anti-abortion movement “Women’s Strike” as a reaction to the decision of the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland on 22 October 2020 to ban abortion on the grounds that it harms the fetus. The decision left only two hypotheses in which the pregnancy can be terminated: when it is the result of a crime or when it poses a danger to the health and life of the mother.
Today, Warsaw Court Judge Tomasz Julian Grochowicz ruled that “while there is no doubt that the defendants were the face of the spontaneous gatherings, there is no doubt that this was a mobilization of women and not only women as part of a demonstration of non-acceptance of the restrictive violation of their rights’.
The judge also stated that the prosecution did not prove a causal link between the organization of the protests and the threat to health.
Lempart welcomed today’s court decision, calling it an act of “little decency” on the part of the Polish state. But he added that despite the change of government in Poland, abortion rights activists are still being questioned.
“There are constant smear campaigns and political hunting,” Lempart said.
Sukhanov and Cheredecka-Fabin said their charges should not have gone to trial at all.
“We all pay for this, all of us taxpayers. But those who are guilty of injustice against women are yet to face any consequences,” they stated.
The Constitutional Tribunal ruling on 22 October 2020 followed a 2019 motion (for legal change) tabled by 119 MPs, mostly from the then-ruling conservative Law and Justice Party. The hard-won compromise on abortion, enshrined in a 1993 law that for nearly three decades had maintained a delicate balance between the opposing sides, was thus overturned.
The case against Lempart, Sukhanov and Cheredecka-Fabin was brought during a period when prosecutors were under the control of the Law and Justice government.