Two draft laws to be voted on in the Polish Sejm on Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16 April provoked outrage from many MEPs.
The first draft submitted to the Polish members of parliament intends to ban one of the cases for abortion still legally permitted in Poland: that of severe foetal anomaly. The second, according to its promoters, is intended to prevent the "sexualisation of children": it aims to limit sexual education and provides for up to 3 years in prison for offenders.
"We are convinced that measures that roll back protections for women's human rights and self determination are of grave concern as they undermine a core European Union value, that of advancing gender equality", warned some 20 MEPs in a letter sent on Tuesday 14 April to Elżbieta Witek, the head of the Sejm, as well as to all MEPs and Polish MPs.
This letter was drafted on the initiative of the MEPs coordinating the European Parliament's pro-choice campaign, All of Us.
Twenty-six MEPs also signed a call for action issued on Friday 10 April by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
"The Polish government is cynically taking advantage of the current situation of lockdown to get this bill through, as the restrictions in place won’t allow people to take to the streets in the same way as the previous mass protests against these measures", lamented S&D President Iratxe Garcia Pérez (Spain), whose group also called on the ruling PiS party and its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, to "abandon this radical legislation".
To view the letter: https://bit.ly/2RFJ181 (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)