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posted by martyb on Friday October 07 2016, @03:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the strikes-that-work dept.

Poland is a very Catholic country and the Roman Catholic Church is very much against abortion. The government is also very anti-labor union.

The Committee for a Workers' International (socialistworld.net) reports

[Poland already] has one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Europe, allowing abortion only in the case of rape, a threat to the health or life of the woman, or deformation of the foetus. In practice, even when these conditions are fulfilled abortion is often prevented by doctors who exploit the so-called "conscience clause" and impose their own religious beliefs on patients by refusing vital treatment.

This law was forced through at the beginning of the 1990s [...] (over 70% of the population was against an abortion ban and supported [...] abortion on demand).

[...] [Recent] plans to impose a total ban on abortion have sparked a massive uncontrolled explosion of anger in Poland. On Monday 3 October a strike of Polish women was called, inspired by the example of Icelandic women, who held a nationwide strike in 1975. [...] Even the police's conservative estimates talk about 98,000 people demonstrating in over 143 separate protests across the country. These are easily the biggest ever protests in defence of abortion rights in Poland, far exceeding the protests in 1993, when the current ban on abortion was introduced.

[This week's strike]

[Continues...]

[...] [In response to the proposed ban, and] inspired by the 1976 strike of women in Iceland, the idea was raised of organising a strike of women. This was not called by any of the trade unions, instead the idea came from within the movement by women who had no previous trade union or strike experience. However, due to the anti-trade union laws and the difficulty of organising a legal strike even by a trade union, women were not encouraged to actually strike, but rather to take a day off work on what was nicknamed Czarny poniedzialek (Back Monday).

Unfortunately many women were prevented from taking part in this strike because they [have lousy employment] contracts and have no right to a day off on demand. For example, Lidl supermarket chain threatened to sack staff who took a day off on Monday.

Finally, on the day of the strike, OPZZ, one of the three major trade union federations, expressed its support and pledged to defend its members from victimisation, should they decide to participate in the protest. Thanks to this, many public administration workers, particularly in local government, were able to strike. A number of theatres and small businesses announced they would close that day to allow their staff to participate. Many more women who had no option but to work dressed in black to express their support for the strike.

[...] Around 10,000 gathered outside parliament in the rain. There were no speakers, but the mood was loud and angry. There were rumours that several thousand protesters marched to Teatr Polski, the theatre where Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the ruling party Law and Justice, was having a meeting.

[...] Law and Justice has been taken completely off guard by the movement. It did not plan to introduce a change in the abortion law, at least not this year, but was forced into taking a position by more right-wing elements and the church, who organised their own "citizen's [initiative]".

Due to the scale of the movement, Law and Justice has reacted by announcing that it will prepare its own compromise draft law, which will probably allow abortion in the case of rape and a threat to the life of the woman, but not in the case of a deformity of the foetus. This, of course, is not a compromise at all, but represents a further tightening of the ban and is completely unacceptable. However, it shows that the government is beginning to feel the pressure.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday October 07 2016, @03:49AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday October 07 2016, @03:49AM (#411330) Homepage Journal

    It is an ancient Greek play about women who put an end to a war by refusing to have sex with their men.

    It's worked for real, more than once.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
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       Informative=1, Total=1
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Friday October 07 2016, @05:14AM

    by tftp (806) on Friday October 07 2016, @05:14AM (#411347) Homepage

    And how many wars were started because wives wanted their men to go out and bring them the shiny baubles that the foreign people have? :-)

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @06:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @06:10AM (#411366)

      Zero?

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @08:54AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @08:54AM (#411405)

        WWII, at least. The amount of stolen gifts German soldiers offered their wives is massive.

        • (Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday October 08 2016, @02:10AM

          by tftp (806) on Saturday October 08 2016, @02:10AM (#411669) Homepage

          The gifts were massive indeed, but they did not start the war. The concept of lebensraum [wikipedia.org] did - and it was easily sold to eager masses, to men and women alike. Soldiers - their families, actually - believed that they will get a large property in Russia and many hundreds of slaves to work that land. That belief was very firm in the first year or maybe two; later it became pretty obvious that all the property the soldiers can hope for will be much smaller and approximately 6' beneath the surface.

          As women represent about 50% of the population themselves and have strong influence over the other 50%, they could (just as described in that play) put some serious opposition to the war. By and large they did not [wikipedia.org]. Many wanted the spoils of war just as much as the men; a significant number signed up - without being required to - and became guards and other personnel of death camps. Power over others is a feeling that many men know, but it is not alien to women either (see Abu Ghraib.) Some even say (from King Arthur's tales) that the thing that a woman wants most is the power over a man. Certainly they got that in camps.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:33AM (#411392)

      babies that the foreign people women have? :-)

      Fixed that for you, since it is more realistic, and just as rational. War is rape. In the first instance, it is homosexual rape: men inserting things into other men's bodies without their permission. Only later the women and the sheep. What was that the Genghis Khan supposedly said?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:36AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:36AM (#411394)

        Sorry, missed a close element: entire quote here:

        And how many wars were started because wives wanted their men to go out and bring them the shiny babies that the foreign people women have? :-)

        Fixed that for you, since it is more realistic, and just as rational. War is rape. In the first instance, it is homosexual rape: men inserting things into other men's bodies without their permission. Only later the women and the sheep. What was that the Genghis Khan supposedly said?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:41AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:41AM (#411395)

          Not to belabor the point.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by KiloByte on Friday October 07 2016, @06:22AM

    by KiloByte (375) on Friday October 07 2016, @06:22AM (#411370)

    It's worked for real, more than once.

    Except that it hasn't really worked. The national socialist government (sorry but both labels are true) is still going to drastically reduce allowed abortion by banning it in cases of a threat to health of the woman (used to be allowed, new law wants a threat to life only), and for fetal defects (currently 99% of abortions). Plus they're going to make abortion unavailable in practice (they've already mostly done so).

    This is a well-known technique [wikipedia.org].

    --
    Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:07AM (#411387)

      Abortion Safer for Women Than Childbirth, Study Claims [usnews.com]

      a woman carrying a baby to term is 14 times more likely to die than a woman who chooses to have a legal abortion

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @07:18AM (#411390)

      The national socialist government (sorry but both labels are true)

      Socialism is all about The Workers.
      A place that is anti-union is not anything like Socialist.
      You have allowed yourself to become a victim of propaganda and, as a result, have a very muddled understanding of the world.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Friday October 07 2016, @07:33PM

        by KiloByte (375) on Friday October 07 2016, @07:33PM (#411586)

        NSDAP banned all unions despite having itself originated as one; PiS likewise dislikes all unions not affiliated with it.

        And this is not even endemic to national socialism: red socialists (ie, communists) did the same to unions they didn't control.

        --
        Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @11:21PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @11:21PM (#411639)

          You're *still* repeating the Cold War propaganda.

          If you -mean- "Stalinists", you should -say- "Stalinists".

          Neither Socialism nor Communism is a top-down thing--despite the efforts of both sides who spewed the Cold War nonsense trying to convince weak-minded people that Totalitarianism is synonymous with those by improperly using the terms.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday October 08 2016, @09:11AM

            by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 08 2016, @09:11AM (#411717) Journal

            There's something of a fascist coup going on in the UK just now. The Conservative Party is turning National Socialist [theguardian.com]. They've already all but broken the unions, decimated the Welfare State and now they're coming for the foreigners. National Socialist is such an oxymoron, isn't it...

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @03:53AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @03:53AM (#411912)

              National Socialist is such an oxymoron

              You got this all wrong as well.
              If you have a place where the means of production is owned by the gov't but the workplaces are NOT Worker Cooperatives, what you have IS NOT SOCIALISM.
              At best, you have Liberal Democracy as a governmental form and you definitely have State Capitalism as the economic model.

              Additionally, Germany during Hitler's regime was Capitalist in the extreme.
              It's an essential element of Fascism.
              Equating a place to someplace Fascist and calling it "socialist" is just plain stupid; the 2 couldn't be more opposite.

              .
              ...and posts in this thread by KiloByte have been a mess from start to finish.
              The usual words that are criticized in the name of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers Party) are Socialist and Workers.

              The Nazis weren't about The Workers (they were anti-union and anti-Communist) and they sure as hell weren't about Socialism (AKA Democracy in the Workplace).

              ...and "National" is NEVER disputed--I certainly didn't.

              -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]