Why Poland is having huge protests

The country’s women are furious at their government. Subscribe to our channel! In October and November of 2020, Poland saw its biggest protests since the fall of its communist regime 30 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of women marched in defiance of a new court ruling that would outlaw abortions under almost any circumstance. Poland has long had some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. But in 2015, the right-wing party Law and Justice (PiS) came to power in Poland, and promptly started trying to narrow abortion access in the country even further. In 2016 they attempted to pass a total ban. They failed. But in 2020, at the ruling party’s request, Poland’s highest court ruled that almost all abortions were illegal. They did so because Law and Justice had spent the previous few years degrading the court’s independence and turning it into an arm of the party. The protests began immediately, partly because of the ruling itself but also because of what it