Women to go on strike in Poland in protest at planned abortion law

Tens of thousands of women are expected to go on strike across Poland in protest against a new law that would effectively ban abortion.

Poland already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations legally permitted only when the life of the foetus is under threat, when there is a grave threat to the health of the mother, and in the instance that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Were the proposed ban to be enacted, all terminations would be criminalised, with women punishable with up to five years in prison. Doctors found to have assisted with a termination would also be liable for prosecution and a prison term.

Critics say that would mean that even a woman who suffers a miscarriage could be under criminal suspicion, and that doctors might be put off conducting even routine procedures on pregnant women for fear of being accused of facilitating a termination.

Although a ban has received public support from elements of the Catholic church and Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), neither initiated the proposals. They were drafted by hardline conservative advocacy group Ordo Iuris and submitted by the Stop Abortion coalition as a “citizens’ initiative” – a petition considered by parliament once it has received more than 100,000 signatures.

When on 23 September the Polish parliament voted for Stop Abortion’s proposals to be scrutinised by a parliamentary committee, pro-choice activists responded by calling a nationwide strike, or “national absence campaign”, by women, encouraging them to take a day off work and domestic tasks and gather for meetings or demonstrations, to donate blood or do charity work.

Many Polish women say they are sick of deals being cut over their fundamental reproductive and human rights, which they argue threaten both their safety and their dignity.

“A lot of women and girls in this country have felt that they don’t have any power, that they are not equal, that they don’t have the right to an opinion,” said Magda Staroszczyk, a strike co-ordinator. “This is a chance for us to be seen, and to be heard.”

The protest was inspired by an all-out strike more than 40 years ago by the women of Iceland, when 90% of women refused to work, cook, or look after their children for a day in October 1975.

Organisers cite an assault on women’s reproductive rights that goes beyond the measures contained in Stop Abortion’s proposed ban. A separate, PiS-sponsored bill restricting IVF (in vitro fertilisation), which would make it illegal to freeze embryos and allow women to fertilise only one embryo at a time, was also passed to the parliamentary committee stage in September.

The Polish Federation of Pro-Life Movements, with the support of an MP from a rightwing parliamentary faction associated with Law and Justice, has called for a total ban of the morning-after pill. Under the proposals, anyone caught selling or distributing emergency contraception could be imprisoned for up to two years.

But it is the perceived cruelty of the proposed abortion ban that has united what has long been a relatively marginal feminist movement with many self-identified Roman Catholics who support the existing “compromise” – shorthand for the legislation passed in 1993 that regulates abortion to this day.

“One thing that I think really radicalised women is when they understood that this could lead to incarceration for women who had miscarriages,” says Agnieszka Graff, a commentator, activist, and author of World without Women: Gender in Polish Public Life.

According to a poll for Newsweek Polska, 74% of Poles support the retention of the existing legislation, while research by polling company Ipsos indicates 50% of Poles support the strike, with 15% saying they would like to take part. A further 15% expressed opposition.

“My mother is very Catholic, goes to church every Sunday, and is against abortion just because you might not want the child,” says Malgorzata Lodyga, a junior doctor who supports the strike. “But she is against this law, because if a woman is raped, she will be treated worse than the man who raped her.”

The intensity of the so-called “black protests” has proved tricky for Law and Justice, which presents itself as the guardian of traditional values in a country beset by liberal notions of multiculturalism, relaxed social mores and restrictive political correctness, but which remains mindful of the risks of alienating mainstream public opinion.

The party’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczyński, has suggested that the government might accept a compromise whereby terminations carried out because of a congenital disorder of the foetus would be banned, but terminations of pregnancies as a result of rape or incest would still be permitted.

Women to go on strike in Poland in protest at planned abortion law

Northampton hospital staff in protest over lockout techniques | Natalie Bloomer

Biomedical scientist Carol Whittaker on the picket line at Northampton Standard hospital with Unite common secretary Len McCluskey Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Carol Whittaker is terrified she will be forced out of the work she loves. In what is believed to be the very first time in the historical past of the NHS, hospital workers including Whittaker, have been “locked-out” of function, following a bitter dispute over spend and hours.

“We have had our swipe cards cancelled and accessibility to the laboratory denied. I cannot feel they are treating us like this. I am not crying nevertheless today, but most days I am in tears. After all these years, I truly feel absolutely allow down by the management,” says Whittaker, who has worked for 23 years as a senior biomedical scientist at Northampton Standard hospital.

Unite, the union that represents the 54 scientists, pathologists and laboratory help personnel at the centre of the dispute, has been in negotiations with hospital bosses because final July. The hospital believe in place forward proposals, which the union says would imply the pathology team, who analyse check benefits and also aid diagnose and deal with ailments, having to operate more evening shifts and see their out-of-hrs payments slashed by up to 80%. The believe in says pathology support employees obtain increased on-contact and out-of-hours payments than their counterparts in other departments. It adds that the proposals are component of wider plans to “harmonise” NHS terms and problems.

Whittaker, who typically performs twenty hours per week, above 5 mornings, says that the planned modifications would make it not possible for her to continue her employment at the hospital. Operating nights would clash with her husband’s task. “It really is not about the income for me, my son is just 13 and a lack of childcare indicates I can’t work nights,” she says.

In June, 84% of the staff voted not to strike, but to consider other industrial action. They were due to commence a perform to rule on 26 June with a ban on overtime, out of hrs operating and the education of other workers. But they say on arriving at perform, they had been told unless they signed documents agreeing not to consider industrial action, their companies would no longer be necessary at the hospital.

“Lockouts”, in which employers stop personnel taking industrial action from accessing their workplace, are rare in the Uk, but in latest weeks striking firefighters in Buckinghamshire have also been threatened with it and the RMT rail union says some London Underground cleaners have been locked out in a dispute above a biometric fingerprinting method.

The move by employers comes at a time when the Conservatives have announced strategies for new laws to curb the rights of public sector unions to take industrial action . This is in spite of recent figures from the Office for National Statistics exhibiting the quantity of strikes in 2013 was down on the preceding two years, with just 114 stoppages.

Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, is assured the union will not shed the dispute in Northampton, but says the implications if they did could be far-reaching across the public sector. “I am totally shocked by [their] therapy. The perform they do behind the scenes is absolutely vital. I am confident there will be senior managers across the nation, hunting at this scenario proper now and rubbing their hands with glee at the believed they have a green light to behave in this appalling way.”

The TUC common secretary, Frances O’Grady, agrees. “Rather than looking for to intimidate employees, employers should be speaking to union members and striving to resolve disputes. If the sturdy-arm tactics used in Northampton be successful, it may possibly encourage other employers to believe that they too are over the law. If this happens we should all be deeply concerned.”

Northampton Standard hospital NHS believe in says that the pathology services must be offered in the most expense-effective way. A trust spokeswoman says: “600 personnel across the hospital have been affected by revised terms and problems and 94% of people have accepted the alterations. The proposals are in line with nationwide suggestions from the NHS workers council.”

Whittaker says she can not bear to feel about what will come about if the dispute cannot be resolved. “If I could say one particular thing to the management, I would simply request them to listen to us and deal with us like the educated men and women we are. We will not want to be out right here, we want to be back inside performing the occupation we love.”

Northampton hospital staff in protest over lockout techniques | Natalie Bloomer

Protest and Survive: highlights from the Medact archive | Elena Carter

At the height of the Cold War, a group of health-related specialists swapped stethoscopes for placards in a bid to highlight the risk posed by nuclear weapons.

The Medact archive has just been catalogued at the Wellcome Library, and tells the story of a group of physicians, nurses and other professional health care practitioners, who joined collectively to protest against nuclear weapons, making use of their healthcare knowledge to argue that the bomb was the best threat to human well being and survival.

They were drawn to activism via a sense of specialist responsibility, and I have picked a handful of hidden gems from the assortment which I feel best capture the spirit of this courageous group.

This is the Enemy poster. Photograph: /Medact/Wellcome Library, London

This poster exhibits how Medact– or the Health care Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (MCANW) as it was then identified –tried to strip the nuclear situation of East versus West dogma, campaigning as an alternative from a place of healthcare authority.

It also provides a nod to the origins of the Worldwide Doctors for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), an umbrella organisation born out of an unlikely alliance among two cardiologists from either side of the Iron Curtain: Bernard Lown from USA and the Russian Evgeni Chazov.

Leaflet satirizing government suggestions on nuclear war. Photograph: /Medact/Wellcome Library, London

This leaflet responds to a 1985 government circular outlining programs for the NHS and the treatment method of casualties in case of war. The advice was heavily criticised by several physicians for offering unrealistic expectations of how the healthcare profession would cope with an assault.

It charts the tongue-in-cheek, but deeply serious, response of one doctor to the total inadequacy of civil defence preparing. It reveals specialist anger at the reassuring tone of the now-infamous Property Office public information video, Safeguard and Survive (accessible below).

BMA Board of Science and Education, “Choice of casualties for treatment after nuclear attack” (1988). Photograph: /Medact/Wellcome Library, London

Spurred on by the lack of concrete evidence about the health-related impact of a nuclear attack, the British Health-related Association’s Science and Training Board launched its very own inquiry in 1981, seeking at the health-related effect of nuclear weapons and assessing whether civil defence could ever be satisfactory.

The BMA’s initial report fully contradicted the claims created in Defend and Survive. It identified that the results of a single megaton explosion more than the United kingdom would lead to casualties which would overwhelm the NHS.

The BMA published two additional reviews in excess of the program of the 1980s, which nonetheless make for chilling reading through. Supplying a stark and devastating evaluation of what daily life after a nuclear explosion would be like, they also highlighting the ethical dilemmas about the treatment of nuclear casualties, including the not possible question of choosing who would be permitted to live and who would be left to die.

The BMA reports have been a wake-up contact. They have been crucial evidence for the anti-nuclear campaign, and supplied a potent counter-argument to the Government’s civil defence programme.

Coventry and Warwickshire Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, Arms or Overall health? The Effect of the Arms Race on Health (1986). Photograph: /Medact/Wellcome Library, London

One argument deployed in defence of nuclear weapons was that their manufacture stored people in jobs.

The Health care Campaign’s Arms Conversion special panel attempted to counter this declare, focusing on how the capabilities and companies utilised for military industries could be converted for peaceful functions.

The Arms Conversion Panel, along with the Coventry Alternative Employment Research (CARE), argued that extremely skilled defence contractors could simply be retrained. They known as for military business to be redeployed toward socially beneficial manufacturing, like the building of health-related devices and disability aids.

This publication demonstrates how the Healthcare Campaign adopted financial, as properly as emotive arguments, addressing fears of unemployment and challenging the standing quo.

Aberdeen Health care Campaign Towards Nuclear Weapons. 1980s. Photograph: /Medact/Wellcome Library, London

There is a excellent collection of images in the Medact archive, some of which have lately been digitised and will soon be freely available on Wellcome Pictures.

These photos demonstrate the human side of the Campaign, capturing the environment of protests, meetings and rallies. Tucked away in these files are a couple of pictures of the Campaign’s exhibitions and displays. As an archivist, it is uncommon to get a sense of the layout of exhibitions or how men and women responded at the time.

These photographs give us a sense of just that, helping us to recognize how Medact used campaigns and exhibitions to engage the public. My favourite pictures are individuals aboard the group’s legendary Medical Campaign buses.

Medact is nonetheless lively these days, and campaigns for global wellness on issues relevant to conflict, poverty and the environment. If you want to locate out much more about the work of this fascinating organisation, the archive is now accessible for analysis at the Wellcome Library, and searchable on our online catalogue.

Elena Carter is a venture archivist at the Wellcome Library. More than the previous 6 months, she has been cataloguing the Medact archive.

Protest and Survive: highlights from the Medact archive | Elena Carter

Spanish nurses protest about cancer sufferers moved to maternity ward

Nurses in Spain have raised worries about cancer and other sufferers being moved to a hospital maternity ward. Photograph: Alamy

Nurses are warning of the hazards to mothers and newborns at a hospital in Madrid in which individuals with cancer and respiratory infections are routinely moved to the maternity ward since there are typically empty beds there due to Spain’s falling birth fee.

SATSE, the union that represents nurses in Spain, mentioned the Fuenlabrada hospital has more and more resorted to shuffling patients among wards in an attempt to handle overcrowding. On some days, up to 75% of the sufferers in the maternity wing should be on other wards, the nurses’ union told Spanish every day newspaper 20minutos.

Whilst all of the sufferers have their own rooms, they do share hallways and frequently nursing personnel. Nurses slammed the practice as inadequate, notably in the case of newborns who risk being exposed to infections in the first hrs of their lives.

The nurses stressed that they felt compelled to talk out after quite a few complaints surfaced about the scenario. One patient comprehensive the uncomfortable juxtaposition of sufferers who are nearing the end of the lives and other sufferers in the maternity ward. “You see families suffering due to the fact their family members member is dying and you happen to be hearing the cries of newborns subsequent to you,” she informed 20minutos.

The hospital blamed the practice on shifting demographics. When the hospital was created ten years ago, it was developed to care for a younger, much more fertile population. Today’s ageing residents, coupled with a birth price that is now a single of the lowest in Europe, implies the demands on the hospital have transformed. The Fuenlabrada hospital, recognised as one of the ideal in which to give birth in the country, has observed the number of births in the hospital plunge from just beneath 3,000 6 years in the past to about 2,000 in 2013. “It would be ridiculous not to use the empty beds to aid ease the amount of sufferers waiting to be taken care of,” mentioned a hospital spokesperson, including that all preventative measure and protocols were in area to minimise any hazards.

The nurses’ union is demanding that the hospital end the practice by rising the amount of beds offered in other wards. Provided the hospital’s shrinking price range, administrators stated that was an unlikely solution. As element of the country’s austerity measures, the Spanish government minimize €7 billion from the country’s healthcare program two many years in the past.

The hospital said it had been left with no other selection but to move individuals wherever they could discover an empty bed. “It truly is greater than obtaining patients sitting in emergency for days and days. In a hospital you have to attend to individuals who need to be handled.”

Spanish nurses protest about cancer sufferers moved to maternity ward

Spanish abortion bill expected to spark substantial protest

Females inquire for ‘health asylum’ at the French embassy in Madrid as element of a protest towards modifications to abortion laws. Photograph: Vallejo/Demotix/Corbis

Tens of 1000′s of men and women are expected to gather in downtown Madrid on Saturday to protest against the Spanish government’s strategy to severely restrict women’s entry to abortion.

More than 300 groups strategy to march to the Spanish parliament to existing a letter demanding that the government abandon its push to enact some of the toughest abortion legislation in Europe. In late December, the governing People’s party (PP) authorized a bill that would see the country’s reasonably liberal abortion laws scaled back. Below the new law, Spanish females would only be capable to terminate pregnancies in the situation of rape or when there was a critical mental or physical well being threat to the mom. The legislation is anticipated to pass in late spring.

Latest polls display between 70% and 80% of Spaniards oppose the alterations. Protests have been taking spot almost every other day across the country, ranging from the women who delivered 220 letters to the French embassy requesting “overall health asylum” to the Andalucian youth who held indications on street corners asking folks to spare modify so they could “travel to London for an abortion” or “spend for a clandestine abortion”.

Saturday’s protest will be a demonstrate of force by a motion that has been steadily growing given that the government announced their ideas, mentioned Puy Zatón, 1 of the protest organisers. “This will be 1 of the most essential protests Spain has noticed in the final 50 years.”

Solidarity protests are also currently being planned in Britain, France, Brussels, Italy and Ecuador.

The abortion debate has spilled in excess of the Spanish border, said Zatón, due to the fact what is occurring in Spain has been a wake-up call about the “fragility” of women’s rights. “European ladies know that what is taking place to us now in Spain could occur to them. All of a sudden these rights can disappear.”

Some of the most vocal opponents of the law have been members of the governing PP. As the get together kicks off their nationwide conference on Friday in Valladolid, the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, will tackle his fractured party, whose quarrels above the proposed law have offered countless fodder for Spanish media. The infighting started when José Antonio Monago, a senior PP leader and the president of the region of Extremadura, asked the government in a statement to abandon its crusade against abortion. He wrote: “No person can deny a female the proper to be a mom, and neither can anybody force a lady to grow to be one particular.”

Politicians across Europe have echoed his worries. In France the minister for women’s affairs, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, openly criticised the proposal to French media. “It really is terrible to see a nation like Spain, which in recent years has become a leader in the battle to finish violence towards ladies … consider a step backwards in the rights of females to choose in excess of their own bodies.”

A heated discussion earlier this month in the European parliament debated what the Spanish selection could imply for the rest of the continent, with the Austrian politician Hannes Swoboda saying he was “frankly shocked” that the Spanish prime minister did not have “other troubles to solve”.

Rajoy has repeatedly maintained that the adjustments simply deal with an election guarantee that must be fulfilled. In a memorandum lately obtained by Spanish media, Spain’s justice ministry presented one more justification for pushing forward with the alterations. Restricting abortions could have a “positive net effect” on the Spanish economic climate, it wrote, by growing the country’s birth rate, currently one of the lowest in the European Union.

In the face of a incredible backlash, Rajoy lately conceded that the reform had turn out to be “a very sensitive situation” and additional he would be open to slightly modifying the bill. “We are willing to go over and listen to you and other people,” he informed a single opposition member right after she called the proposed measures backward.

As she and other protest organisers gear up to welcome thousands to Madrid, Zatón rejected any talk of modifications of the bill. Saturday’s mass mobilisation has just one particular purpose, she explained firmly. “We want this task to disappear.”

Spanish abortion bill expected to spark substantial protest