“Piekło kobiet – Die Hölle der Frauen” Der Streit um das Recht auf Abtreibung in Polen seit 1918 | Piekło kobiet – The Hell of Women”: The dispute over the right to abortion in Poland since 1918

Jurek Wejwoda

Ankündigungstext deutsch

Since the de facto complete abolition of the right to abortion on  22.10.2020, Poland has been one of the most rigid states in Europe in  the area of reproductive rights. The verdict of the Constitutional  Court, controlled by the ruling PiS party, was the temporary endpoint  of a development that already began with the election victory of the  PiS on 25.10.2015. Already one year later, the government tried to  push through an amendment to the existing law of 1993 in the Polish  parliament.
A protest movement was formed against this, which became known as the  Black Protest. A frequently used slogan of this time was the one  mentioned in the title “Piekło kobiet – The Hell of Women”. With this  slogan, the protest specifically took recourse to the conflicts of the  1920s/1930s when, in Poland, which was once again independent, there  were first disputes about the form of abortion law.
The lecture will trace the arc from these first struggles to the  current situation, introducing protagonists from both sides and  placing them in larger cultural-historical contexts.