[Gdansk, 28 June 2017] We, the representatives of Network of East-West Women, speak up in the name of member organizations of the Polish Women’s Lobby. We would like to share our deep concern regarding the reproductive rights being more and more challenged in Poland. The most recent occurrence we record would be the legislation act which is practically banning the open access to the emergency post-coital contraceptive pill (widely recognized as ‘morning-after’ or ‘24-horus after’ pill), the grotesque act preceded by the admission in the parliament of Poland in May and in the beginning of June 2017.
The act have no conclusive background whatsoever, according to the medical authorities, reproductive rights experts and women’s rights observatories all over Europe. It’s obviously the cruel act of power. We cannot accept this symbolical and real act of violence against women, affecting their elementary human rights regarding their bodies, their health, as well as their potential moral and life choices.
Early this month our member organization, Federation for Women and Family Planning altogether with Coalition WKRW issued the letter to the President of Poland, asking him to stop him from signing the act and at the same time listing the myths and other misleading statements around the morning-after pill’s potential effects on women’s health, expressed by the so called, controversial ‘authorities’ in the public sphere. We must now confirm that the voice of dozens of women activists and experts in the matter have not been heard.
There we stand and we have to express once again that we don’t and we won’t accept the legislations excluding women’s voice and affecting so deeply our basic rights as women and girls. We’ll be standing here rejecting the oppressive changes and doing whatever it takes to stop the whole devastating process.
Małgorzata Tarasiewicz, Julia Gierczak
Network of East-West Women
European Women’s Lobby Poland
