Protest against new Polish law on abortion held in Budapest
As a reaction to Poland’s horrific and cruel new law on abortion, a peaceful protest was organised in front of the Polish Embassy in Budapest. Poland outlawed abortion in cases where the foetus is severely damaged or malformed.
A peaceful demonstration was held in front of the Polish Embassy in Budapest on Wednesday night (28 October), hvg reports. Approximately 600 people attended the demonstration, chanting “Enough is enough!”. Protesters aimed to show sympathy with all Polish women affected by the new law on abortion in Poland.
Poland outlawed abortion in cases where the foetus is severely damaged or malformed. This means that almost all forms of abortion have been banned in the country. The only exception is when the woman can prove that the pregnancy is a result of rape.
Unfortunately, women can rarely prove this in time, so abortion is basically banned in all its forms.
Forcing women to give birth to a dead foetus is extremely cruel and inhumane, and it deeply traumatises women.
There have been over 73 million abortions annually between 2015 and 2019, which means that every fourth pregnancy ended in abortion. The ratio of legal and illegal abortions is about 50-50%.
Statistics prove that legalising abortion does not have a direct impact on the number of abortions carried out, it only influences the mortality rate of abortion.
Poland has some of the strictest abortion legislation in the EU, The Guardian writes.
“Since 1997, of approximately 1,000 legal terminations performed annually in Poland, the vast majority cite severe foetal abnormality. After last week’s ruling by the tribunal, this too will be illegal.”
Luckily, laws on abortion are not as strict in Hungary as they are in Poland. However, based on the recent statements of government politicians (all male, of course), they probably would not mind introducing similar laws here.
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House Speaker László Kövér recently made the following statement: “the world belongs to those who fill it by birthing children.”
I apologise for the weak translation, but “teleszülni” is a hard word to translate, as it has not really existed in the Hungarian language before. Please keep in mind that this is the same man who claimed that “normal homosexuals do not consider themselves equal,” and he also came to the conclusion that according to him, there is really no difference between a gay couple wanting to adopt a child and a paedophile.
Read alsoHungarian House Speaker: “Normal homosexuals don’t consider themselves equal”
Reacting to Kövér’s statement, one protester said:
“People who want women to fill the world by birthing children are the ones who pretend that the world is theirs, even though they are not capable of giving birth themselves.”
Source: www.hvg.hu; www.theguardian.com
I am glad that the author of this article described Poland’s new law as “horrific and cruel”. How true. As the Guardian noted the other day, regimes which rely upon the Church for validity are without exception failing regimes. Using religion as a prop shows a deep seated insecurity within a government, a desperate grab for control outside of the remit of the functions of government which are supposed to be secular by their nature. Also, with regard to Kövér, he is not only homophobic but also quite clearly a misogynist. That combination of psychotic beliefs says a lot about him – his hatred and belittlement of women and all things LGBTQ is a classic psychiatric condition experienced by men who are either (or both) sexually ‘inadequate’ and who harbour deep rooted, repressed gay desires but cannot admit that to themselves. Dig deep and I suspect that a pattern of abuse will emerge from his life.
I fully support the protests. And I am a Christian believer, Roman Catholic.
States must follow secular law, not theocratic.
States must protect all people, regardless of ethnicity, religious belief, gender, orientation, etc.etc.
As a person with a uterus, I agree with the comment that states must protect all people. It shouldn’t matter on location or size. Also it seems that many people believe that views of people from bigger cities, with higher education, more international exposure are somehow superior to ones from small villages, high school education and how much they have travelled. Wisdom is not proportional to such experiences. But if it matters to someone, as a person from a bigger city, with higher education, who had a lot of international exposure I do not support abortion, I think the child can decide if it wants to live later on, plenty of opportunities for suicide for those who do not want to live, we should not make the choice for them.