“The feminist and women’s movement even half a year ago was quite small, and because of the protests, it has expanded,” said Barbara Nowacka, an opposition politician and activist who held a public discussion in a downtown Warsaw cafe on a recent evening.
Across town, activists were protesting at Parliament. “You could say that we’re in the same place we were a year ago. The abortion law has not changed. But we’ve managed to build big support for women’s issues, not only for abortion but for dignity, the fight against domestic violence and others,” Nowacka said. [...]
If the protests halted the total ban on abortions, legalizing most abortions, a process commonly called “liberalization,” also seems unlikely. A poll by Newsweek Polska reported that 74 percent of Poles support maintaining the current legislation.
One woman, a government employee, who attended Nowacka’s discussion said that she had protested the total ban on abortions and wanted to see better sex education. But “if a bunch of feminists go out and say they want to get rid of thelaw entirely, then I would be against.” [...]
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful leader of Poland’s majority, and highly conservative, Law and Justice party, said he opposed the total abortion ban last month after the protests. But he has signaled support for new laws.
“Even when the pregnancy is very difficult, when the child is doomed to die or seriously malformed,” he told a Polish news agency in an interview, it is important “that there is a delivery, so that the child can be christened and buried, so that it has a name.”
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