Abortion activists in Poland tried to force their way into Catholic Churches over the weekend as they protested a court ruling ending abortions on unborn babies with disabilities.
Poland’s high court struck down the discriminatory abortion law Thursday, agreeing with pro-lifers that unborn babies are human beings who deserve a right to life. Immediately afterward, abortion activists began protesting in the streets.
On Sunday, The Daily Mail reports pro-abortion rioters vandalized churches in several cities across the country. According to AFP, police also detained several pro-abortion protesters for trying to force their way into a church in Warsaw.
In the city of Poznan, dozens of pro-abortion protesters did break into a church and disrupt a service, shouting, “We’ve had enough!” and “Barbarians!” as they held signs in front of the altar, the Mail reports.
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Here’s more from the report:
Protesters, brandishing placards bearing expletives and others saying ‘I wish I could abort my government’, clashed with police and supporters of the ban outside a landmark church in central Warsaw.
Local media also ran pictures of graffiti on church walls in various cities and towns reading ‘Women’s hell’ – the main slogan of the protests.
Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki issued an appeal for peace Sunday after his church was one of those targeted by pro-abortion rioters, according to the Catholic News Agency.
“Profanity, violence, abusive inscriptions, and the disturbance of services and profanations that have been committed in recent days — although they may help some people to defuse their emotions — are not the right way to act in a democratic state,” he said. “I express my sadness that in many churches today believers have been prevented from praying and that the right to profess their faith has been forcibly taken away.”
Gadecki said the Catholic Church will not stop fighting for unborn babies.
“For her part, the Church cannot cease to defend life, nor can she fail to proclaim that every human being must be protected from conception until natural death,” the archbishop continued. “On this point, the Church, as Pope Francis often says, cannot compromise, because it would be guilty of the culture of rejection that is so widespread today, always affecting the most needy and vulnerable.”
Poland is one of the few countries in Europe that protects unborn babies from abortions in almost all cases.
On Thursday, its constitutional court struck down one of the few exceptions allowed in its 1993 abortion law – abortions on unborn babies with disabilities. The justices ruled that the exception violates the constitution because it discriminates against human beings with disabilities.
Poland still allows abortions in cases of rape, incest or threats to the mother’s life.
Pro-life and political leaders celebrated the news as a huge victory for the rights of unborn babies.
“One cannot kill a child for being sick. This is not a fetus, it is a child,” MP Maria Kurowska, of United Poland, told Reuters.
Mikolaj Pawlak, the commissioner for child rights in Poland, also celebrated the ruling.
“The decision of the Constitutional Court declaring eugenic abortion incompatible with the constitution is a victory of life over death,” Pawlak said. “It is a restoration of equal rights for every human being, including those who have not yet been born.”
The ruling could save thousands of babies’ lives. Polish health officials reported 1,100 abortions in 2019, according to the report.
Protests began soon after the ruling was announced, and pro-abortion feminist groups said they are planning more protests for the coming weeks.
Last week, the BBC reported police arrested 15 pro-abortion protesters after they began throwing stones Thursday night in Warsaw. The report, along with others from NBC News and the AP, indicate several rioters also were arrested for trying to break through a police blockade outside the home of Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is pro-life. Reports say police used pepper spray to quell the rioters.
Abortion activists also broke coronavirus restrictions in Warsaw. The city has a 10-person limit on gatherings, and city police said they fined 35 people for breaking the restriction, the Independent reports.
