Poland Gets Slapped Again by European Court of Human Rights

I first blogged about this horrible story from poor benighted Poland in 2008. (I've been at this too long.)

A 14-year-old girl was raped and got pregnant. Her mother braved Poland's insanely restrictive abortion laws and got permission for a termination.

But the local Catlick priest got wind of it and tried to bully the girl out of it -- in the FUCKING hospital.

All kinds of further hoo-haw ensued but the girl did get the abortion.

Apparently, they took the Polish government to the European Court of Human Rights and won with compensation of 61,000 euros.

In their ruling, which is subject to appeal, a panel of judges at the European Court of Human Rights found that there had been numerous breaches of the girl's rights.

The court found that she should gave had unhindered access to lawful abortion and that the details of her case should not have been made public by hospital authorities.

The BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw says that Poland's abortion law is unlikely to become more liberal soon.

Poland's Catholic church is fiercely opposed to any attempts to ease the restrictions and a majority of mainstream politicians support the status quo.

This is not the first time Poland's Christian Sharia law has come to the attention of this court.

And as for having such draconian abortion laws, how about this?

An estimated 150,000 clandestine abortions take place annually in Poland, generating around $95 million of undeclared and tax-free revenue.

When abortion is restricted or illegal, it goes underground. Women and girls are put at risk and society loses.


h/t's for rape victim follow-up link Stephen Lautens and for clandestine Polish abortions link to Claudine Jacques

Poland Just Got Interesting

Over the years, DJ! has kept an eye on priest-ridden, misogynist Poland. Mostly, we've been appalled, but this week there's some very interesting and hopeful news.

In Sunday's election, ten per cent of Polish voters went nuts and voted for the Palikot Movement.

There is a picture, drawn by Polish cartoonist Marek Raczkowski: a crowd of people demonstrating in the street, carrying aloft a big banner that simply reads "FUUUCK!''. This is exactly how many young, well-educated, open-minded people felt on their way to the polling booth last Sunday. And these Poles voted for Janusz Palikot, whose recently created Movement party ended up coming third, with 10% of votes. His success is without a doubt the most thrilling story to come out of these elections. So who is this man, and why did 10% of Polish voters back him?

Palikot's Movement is the first political party in our country that has not been afraid to open up a debate about such sensitive subjects as a secular state, civil unions for heterosexual and homosexual couples, in-vitro fertilisation reimbursed by national health insurance, or a modern drug policy.

Thanks to Palikot's Movement, we now have the first openly homosexual politician in our parliament, Robert Biedron, and the first transsexual woman, Anna Grodzka. It almost feels like the day when the first black president of the United States was elected. One of the first things Biedron said after hearing the election results was: "A few years ago neighbours from my town used to throw rocks at me when I went jogging, because I was gay. And now Poles have chosen me to be their deputy. This is unbelievable. Our country is changing!"

Palikot wants to decriminalize marijuana, liberalize Poland's idiotic abortion laws, institute civil partnerships, and get the fricking Catlick Church out of politics.

He's a bit of a character.

The eccentric Palikot first conquered our hearts when he was Civic Platform's deputy a couple of years ago: during a now infamous press conference, he waved a plastic vibrator and a toy pistol around in order to call attention to a cover-up about a young woman who had been raped at a police station. Another time, he brought the bleeding stump of a bull's head onto a popular TV show, as a "mafia gift". Palikot has imagination and courage, and has earned enough from his previous career so that him and his family do not depend on the deputy's salary.

In my opinion, there is one conclusion we can draw from Palikot's victory: 10% of Poland's voters are willing to wave their metaphorical pink vibrators at the political establishment. Their vote was Poland's equivalent of camping on Madrid's Puerta del Sol or occupying Wall Street. Next, they want to hear some serious political solutions.

I dunno about that last bit, but Prime Minister Donald Tusk's party was re-elected with only a plurality. He needs votes in parliament. Will he continue to go with the misogynist pro-Catlick gang he has been working with? Or ally himself with the dildo-wavers?

Stay tuned. Poland just got interesting.

Image source.

War on Women Goes Global

Weird, dark days for women's rights and not just in the Excited States, though they do take the (fruit) cake.

In the UK, they have an adoption czar, who wants women to, guess what? Give up unwanted children for adoption.

Women who are pregnant with unwanted babies should be advised to have the child and give it away for adoption, the Government’s new adoption czar said today.

They should be offered adoption as a routine ‘third option’ alongside abortion or struggling to raise the baby themselves, he said.

What are the qualifications for adoption czar, you ask?

Mr Narey, a former Prison Service chief who became an advocate of adoption while running the children’s charity, said social workers should no longer press pregnant women with personal difficulties that they should bring up their child.

This, a day after scandalous abortion stats were released showing that some women aborted fetuses that would have become 'special needs' children. So, I guess those women should have carried to term and loving couples would be lined up around the block to adopt.

Yeah. Right.

Now, Poland, poor benighted Poland, where fetus fetishists are also on a roll and want to outlaw abortion altogether.

The draft had been submitted to parliament by anti-abortion activists, drawing support from about 450,000 petitioners from the conservative opposition as well as a rightist, liberal party in the ruling coalition.

Abortion is outlawed in Poland except in cases when pregnancy results from rape or incest, poses a health risk to the mother or if the foetus is severely deformed.

But even under such conditions, hospitals are known to refuse abortions.

Illegal abortions can be punished by up to two years in prison for those who perform them, while the women themselves are not liable.

Polish women's rights group say there are up to 180,000 illegal abortions in Poland each year, while official data indicates just hundreds of legal terminations annually.

We've followed stories from Poland before: like this one of a raped 14-year-old girl caught between the forced birth gang and more humane forces. She was separated from her mother and bullied by a priest into refusing an abortion. Sense prevailed.

This story didn't have a good outcome. A severely myopic woman feared for her eyesight if she continued her third pregnancy. She consulted a bunch of doctors who agreed that her sight was endangered but who wouldn't sign the permission for an abortion. Right to (fetal) life trumps right to see.

And now for some good news.

Last year, Spain liberalized its abortion and contraception laws. The Poop was pissed and Spain was declared to be on a direct route to hell.

Well, looky here. A year later, abortions have declined.

Funny, innit? Treat people like grownups and they act like grownups.

Just when you think . . . (an apparently continuing series)

Today's 'just when you think the fetus fetishists can't sink any lower' moment.

Polish anti-abortion activists have caused shock with a giant billboard poster depicting aborted foetuses and Adolf Hitler in a campaign timed to remind Poles of Nazi rule during World War Two.

"Abortion was introduced for Polish women by Hitler on March 9, 1943," reads the poster, referring to a law passed by the Nazi regime during its brutal six-year occupation of Poland.

Images of blood-red aborted foetuses are juxtaposed with Hitler's brooding face on the poster.

The anti-abortion group Pro said it was entirely legitimate to make a link between abortion and Nazi crimes.

"It is our duty to fight for the rights of murdered children," Mariusz Dzierzawski, a campaign organiser, told Reuters. "Abortion is a crime and drawing such a parallel is absolutely justified."

And from the Polish press:

The campaign has been severely criticized in Poland even by the Catholic circles. “I’m afraid the campaign exceeds the limit of decency,” priest Adam Boniecki, editor-in-chief of Tygodnik Powszechny told Gazeta Wyborcza. The Pro Foundation is famous for its shocking campaigns, which have included a photo exhibition of a damaged foetus at a rock concert. “In the battle against abortion conventional methods are useless. We have no choice but to apply controversial ones,” the anti-abortion activist told Gazeta Wyborcza.

'We have no choice' = 'We were just following orders'?

They want to flood the country with these lovely images for anti-choice demonstrations planned for March 7, just ahead of Women's Day on March 8.

The weird thing is that Poland already has one of the strictest anti-abortion regimes in the world, let alone Europe.

For example, a Polish woman who had been told that her continued pregnancy would endanger her vision was denied an abortion. She took the state of Poland to the European Court of Human Rights and won.

But, like the fetus freak said, all's fair in this misogynist crusade: labelling disabled children god's punishment for abortion, race-baiting, and now this.

If you want to see the billboard, there's a photo here.

No Apologies Please, We're Catholic

One of my earliest blogposts at Birth Pangs was about a Polish woman named Alicja Tysiac. She was pregnant for the third time and severely myopic. She worried that continuing the pregnancy would deteriorate her vision further.

She consulted three ophthalmologists, who each concluded her eyesight would be further damaged if she carried the pregnancy to term. But they refused to issue a certificate for the pregnancy to be terminated on medical grounds, despite Tysiac’s requests. . . . After the delivery, her eyesight deteriorated considerably as a result of what was diagnosed as a retinal hemorrhage.

She took the state of Poland to the European Court of Human Rights and won. She has since become something of a heroine to reproductive rights activists there in their battle against Poland's draconian abortion law.

And for that, she's become a demon to Polish fetus fetishists. A vicious article in a catlick magazine characterized her as a murderer and abortion as Nazi crimes.

It seems that was a bit much, even in Poland. The magazine has been ordered by a court to pay her damages and apologize to her.

Judge Ewa Solecka ruled Wednesday that Catholics are free to express their moral disapproval of abortion — and even call it murder — but in a general way that stops short of vilifying an individual.

Solecka ordered the magazine, Gosc Niedzielny, which is published by the Katowice archdiocese, to pay Alicja Tysiac 30,000 zlotys (nearly $11,000) and issue her a written apology.

Solecka said the magazine's language was "particularly contemptuous" of Tysiac.

Natch, the magazine plans to appeal, because as we all know, if there's one thing catlicks hate even more than abortion, it's apologizing.

MORE: Go read Sabina at News of the Restless.

Of Course There is Do-It-Yourself Abortion in New Brunswick

Well, who didn't see this coming?

Because abortions are nearly impossible to access in New Brunswick, people in need of the procedure have begun terminating their pregnancies themselves.

Whenever and wherever women have found it impossible to continue a pregnancy and to find competent help to end it, they have resorted to whatever is handy and has the slightest chance of working. And, it is to be hoped, not kill or maim them.

Right now, for example:

A woman in Morocco looking for help is considering drinking bleach to end her pregnancy. In Poland, a rape victim says she’s thinking about hitting her stomach with a stick to induce a miscarriage. Another woman desperately emails, “I am not a monster, I just cannot have the baby.”

These are the distressed messages that Women on Waves receive every day from women who live in countries where abortion is illegal. The organisation, an activist group famous for providing abortions on a ship in international waters, has recently been chronicled in the award-winning film, Vessel. The movie follows the work of Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts and her crew as they work around various countries’ abortion laws – and sometimes just flout them – to help women end their pregnancies.

While watching the film, which has its New York premiere next month, it’s hard not think about the current hostile climate for reproductive rights here in the US and wonder: How long until illegal abortion is the norm here, too?

If the Women on Waves ship visits North America, a period anchored in Northumberland Strait would be useful to the women of PEI and New Brunswick who are denied -- for purely political reasons -- access to a common medical procedure available to the rest of Canadian women.

In the meantime, here's some advice from the organization's website, Women on Web.

The best and safest way a woman can do an abortion herself until the 12th week of pregnancy is with the use of two medicines called Mifepristone (also known as the abortion pill, RU 486, Mifegyn, Mifeprex), and Misoprostol (also known as Cytotec, Arthrotec, Oxaprost, Cyprostol, Mibetec, Prostokos or Misotrol). If you live in a country where there is no access to safe abortion services and you would like to obtain a medical abortion with Mifepristone and Misoprostol, please go to Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org).

While women may be just as desperate as ever, the (semi-) good news is that DIY abortion is safer.

Although abortion is still illegal in many countries around the world, "do-it-yourself" (DIY) medical abortion means that it has become much safer compared to traditional methods such as inserting foreign objects in the uterus or ingesting poisons. However, there are still dangers when women buy dubious medication on the black market and take it without any instructions or medical supervision -- hence, the urgent need for groups like [new international foundation called Women Help Women] WHW, as well as Women on Web. The latter group courageously piloted the online provision of medical abortion in 2006, proving the viability and safety of this model.

And speaking of politics, the newly elected Liberal Premier of New Brunswick is already walking back one of his major promises. He seems to be changing his tune on fracking.

Gee, I wonder how the fetus fetishists of the province will respond to that news, given recent research showing that fracking increases the risk of fetuses developing congenital heart problems?

Reproductive Justice New Brunswick is keeping track of Gallant's shilly-shallying on his abortion review promise with its Days of Inaction Timer.

New Brunswick women who can afford it and have a passport will continue to contribute to the spike in abortions provided in Maine. But women who can't afford it will resort to other means, necessarily less safe than medical abortion.

Any less-than-ideal consequences of that will be on you, Premier Gallant.

Anti-Choice "Culture": Numismatics and Philately Divisions

A frequent lament from fetus freaks like SUZY ALLCAPS is "We have [sic] pro-lifers have no culture."

http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2009/01/sorry-republicans-pro-lifers-there-is.html

By "culture," I assume they mean music and films and television shows that don't actually suck. Celebs other than D-stringers standing up for forced pregnancy and merciless end-of-life misery. That sort of thing.

While the "culture" thing continues to elude them, there's movement on a couple of other fronts.

On January 19, I saw this on Twitter.

I'll ask again, what is the international anti-abortion logo Precious Feet doing on our coins? No answers? #CdnPoli pic.twitter.com/R19ss5frhc

— Andrew Dodds (@AndrewJDodds) January 19, 2015

I asked where he saw it and he said it was an ad in the print edition of the Ottawa Citizen on Saturday, Jan. 17/15.

The coin is called "Welcome to the World" and has been issued annually since 2011.

Sells out every year, order yours before they're gone!

Andrew Dodds, like millions of others, correctly identified the symbol as the fetus freaks' "precious feet". They claim that as of 2010, 18 million of the little things have been distributed. For a glurgeful account of its history see this pdf.

"Welcome to the World" is a commemorative coin. We get that. Its target audience is the friends, family and, we imagine, especially the grandparents of new additions to the world's population.

Have a look here for images of all of them since 2011. Note that in its inaugural year, it contains the explicit words "born in/né en," dropped the following and subsequent years.

We wonder why.

Here's some info from the Royal Canadian Mint's FAQ page.

All coin products are subject to Government approval:

Non-circulation coin designs are the responsibility of the Minister responsible for the Royal Canadian Mint;

Circulation coins are authorized by Order in Council.

See, the thing is: this symbol is instantly recognizable as the international anti-abortion symbol. Did some marketing genius at the Royal Mint pitch the notion that they could sell a lot more of the doodads if they just left that "born in/né en" bit off to suck in the fetus fetishists?

Who knows? Here's the astroturf arm of Focus on the Family.

I take it as a sign of how those who are pro-choice are fighting a losing battle, because at the end of the day, the feet you celebrate and the feet whose life ends look very, very similar.

Why is the Canadian government participating in this charade? It's a commemorative coin, meant to be bought and given as a keepsake to a newborn. Fine. Leave the "born in/né en" on it and I have no problem with it.

In other news, fetus freaks are celebrating an incursion into Polish culture.

Mary Wagner, grandstanding and time-wasting anti-choice martyr, has had a stamp issued in her honour, but it's unclear to me whether it can actually function to expedite mail (emphasis mine).

“It is a new, non-conventional form of fighting for the lives of the unborn,” explained the stamp’s designer, Jacek Kotula, to LifeSiteNews. He ordered the stamps, and the Polish Postal Service issued them for a fee. On each of them appears Wagner’s face behind prison bars and the word “POLSKA” (Poland).

Kotula wanted to include the sentence "FREE MARY WAGNER" on the stamp, but it proved impossible. He said that the Post Office refused because they viewed it as “a political affair of international impact” that they did not want to get involved with.
...
These beautiful Polish stamps could become a collectors’ item as well as a fundraising tool.

Fundraising for whom? How?

While they still can't produced music or films that anyone would want to listen to or see, fetus freaks continue to preach to -- and profit from -- the choir.

The invasion continues.

25 years ago, when gay icon Bette Midler married Martin Von Haselberg, she would joke that she and her husband enjoyed kinky sex. "I dress up like Poland and I ask him to invade me," was her provocative one-liner, meant to underline their geo-political and cultural differences. As far as I know, they are still (heterosexually) married.

Neither Bette nor Martin will be speaking at the mini-G-20 Alison writes about at Creekside. In fact, there are no women in the line-up; only the voices of male, pallid-skinned, rightwing fundamentalist christian (and a token non-perfected jew) zealots will be heard. Karl Rove. Michael Coren. Grant Jeffrey ... Canada's "most prolific" writer? Snerk. News of Margaret Atwood have not reached inside Dokter McVety's protective bubble?

Some do enjoy the smell of fire-and-brimstone in the morning.