The Underground State of Women

This article on Time explains how women access abortion in Ireland - basically, same as in Poland. It also adds an interesting research on how women feel about abortions after performing them.

"Ninety-four percent of the 1,023 women who completed the at-home abortion said they felt grateful for the option, 97% said at-home mediation abortion was the right choice for them, and 98% said they would recommend the option to other women with unwanted pregnancies.

When asked about their feelings after completing the abortion, 70% of the women said they felt relieved, which was the most common sentiment expressed, followed by 35% who said they felt satisfied.

“What I think is most striking is that women reported these clear benefits for their health and wellbeing and anatomy,” says Aiken. “I think it really demonstrates that women can make the best choice for themselves when it comes to their own reproduction. The only negative thing about this is that women reported they had to do it against the law, and they went through considerable stress and anxiety and secrecy and isolation and shame.”

Co myślicie o zaostrzeniu ustawy antyaborcyjnej? Czy uczestniczycie w akcjach Strajku Kobiet? @Ja-Rek, @Pracownica, @matka, @JustMe, @Pepe, @mariolamayra, @ALaAl, @Adam, @Sonia, @AndrzejMazur, @EwaSJ, @michal.trzesimiech, @EwaJ-L, @miloskonjovic82, @Justin, @Wiciu, @Annaz, @Ewa_Dryjanska

In a world when we just lost 90% of our civil rights since march 11, abortion is just one of the topics. We should not focus on this but focus on who owns ones body in general and having the right to make decisions about our bodies and our health. Its time to really face the truth: we are not allowed to leave home, we are not allowed to work, we are not allowed to breathe freely, we are not allowed to meet, we are not allowed to demonstrate, and the governments could inject whatever crap they want in our bodies and our children bodies without our consent. Why do we discuss abortion at all? Once we solve the main problem, my body, my choice, the abortion problem will be no more. Abortion was put on the table now to divide society, lose our energy and hide that there is something much worse going on behind, straight way to global slavery. I can’t just believe people do not see this and keep on discussing “just abortion” while there is an on-going global fight to not be treated as farm factory animals. And of course women rights are part of it but it’s just about human rights in general now. So yes its good to have women protesting but it is not enough now to save us from global dictatorship. It is also about understanding there is nothing good in having to choose abortion although it is absolutely key that this choice stays a woman choice. In some countries you may have the right to get abortion, still you are forced to put your kids at school as soon as 3 years old and you are not allowed to decide how to take care about their health because the state does. No it’s not North Korea, it is France. So it’s a bigger issue than women rights in Poland. Of course, fully supporting that but it is kind of a mistake to limit the problem of body ownership to the abortion rights in Poland while it concerns all humans on the planet now.

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Hi @Sonia, thanks for your contribution to this topic - it’s been 4 years and it is a shame to see that nothing has really changed, if anything the altright parties have gathered more support across Europe! I’m writing this as in my own country (Romania) a new right wing, ultra conservative movement have ‘surprisingly’ and out of nowhere just won 10% of the seats in Parliament…

The human rights issue is highly politicized - if you’d ask people if they believe in human rights probably many would say yes at the general value level, but when you start drilling on how this breaks into specific policy measures, that’s when it becomes so polarizing and comes down to war. Especially in the case of abortion, the opponents claim exactly that: that every life has value and who are we to curb it… you see, the more high level the debate, the harder it is, because value-based conflicts are so incredibly hard to win.

While I agree with you on the general need to look at things with a broader perspective and not be happy with these smaller wins and file them under ‘progress’, what to do? Which fights are you personally picking to send this message of ‘Once we solve the main problem, my body, my choice, the abortion problem will be no more.’?

Paging @AskaBednarczyk and @pwawrzynczyk because I think this discussion could be very relevant to their field of work…

This story speaks volumes about how hard it can be on a practical level… and how it is hard to even get your head from the sand to see the bigger picture… when human rights can also mean minimum income!

@Sonia, I share your concern about the world getting more authoritarian, though I would not put the abortion rights and the vaccination in the same box. Apparently, I have never met so many people opposing the vaccination or skeptical to it before. Maybe because in the former Soviet block countries the health care was centralized and free of charge. No one was asking the question where does the vaccine come from. Why do you think it is such a big topic in Poland right now? @maniamana, @Dosia, @michal.trzesimiech

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Wolha vaccines are a global topic, not at all a polish one. The truth about vaccines came mainly from the US whistleblowers and activists since already few years, with many informations being released in 2017. There are tons of materials available who can explain the problem better than me and if you have not done your research its difficult to say where to start. However before answering your question I would ask you rather why do not put it in the same box? It is about somebody in the government outside deciding about your body, your health and your life or death (or these of your children). So what is the difference?

I haven’t heard that Ordo Iuris have some interest in the anti-vaccine discourse, that is why. Great that there are also pro-choice initiatives with strong visual imagery Barbara Kruger artworks plastered on Polish streets in pro-choice protest | Dazed

Wow, Sonia, I had no idea you are anti-vaccines and somehow I missed the hints in your first comment. Do you think this about all vaccines or just some?

In a funny coincidence, this morning I was going through a playlist of videos from one of my favourite youtube channels, and I watched this video. No need to go into a lot of debate technically (both sides can come with tons of evidences), but I’m curious when you started being anti? Growing up in our countries, like Wolha says, no one was talking about it and I suspect we all got our childhood vaccines right? But now times have changed…

Hi I am not anti vaccine like I am not pro abortion. I am pro freedom of choice and against the government or anybody else owing an individuals body because this is called slavery and violence. You actually were right in your interpretation because my text was not about vaccines, they are just a part of the much larger picture. Abortion in some cases is not good and vaccines in some cases could maybe be life saving but I am for the individual right to decide. My text was among others about every medical procedure in relation to the Nuremberg trials which happened after WWII and it was stated, as a lesson learned from concentration camps, that no medical procedure or experiment should be ever forced on people. Last 10 years many laws were changed all over the world that are against this basic principle. Its not only about vaccines but for example doctors having the right to quarantine you for 60 days and administrate you medicine against your will (including using police force), people being forced to undergo chemotherapy against their will (many cases in the US), people being detained in hospitals, and more widely what we saw with the pandemic. People being detained at home, forced to wear masks, businesses being closed over the health pretext etc etc. Not even talking about speech freedom, censorship and the right to demonstrate. So this is a very large topic, about your civil rights in general, even the very very basic ones. My body my choice also related to for example LGBT rights. But of course this year what we saw was the end of any civil rights and even though vaccines for all are coming to the picture now, which was obvious since the beginning, they are just an element. But it has to be said there is a very strong censorship on the internet about this topic which means there could be more here at stake than people think. For example Vimeo puts vaccine skepticism in the same box than terrorism and child porn. So it means if you have any doubts you are not allowed to express them on major internet platforms. That itself should raise doubts because it just means you are not allowed to question or ask and medical science is not mathematics, its evolving and we shall have at least the right to access all the information available before making decisions. Some years ago some medical procedures were considered good which today are considered harmful. But coming back to the main issues- the basic issue is once you allow the government with pretext like „public health and safety” to do what they want with individual people, there is no more human rights and freedom. “Public safety”, meaning terrorism threat was also used, especially in US and France to enforce major control and decline of individual rights. That also is not something new but for example in France, home schooling was just canceled this year. They also installed preschool obligation for children starting 3 years old. As a pretext they used terrorism. Meaning that in France they force people now to put 3 year olds which can be emotionally not ready to public preschool for several hours per day. This is just taking away any parental rights and separating parents from children, under the pretext of giving education and preventing terrorism. The right of parents to choose the education they want for their kids which was won over 100 years ago was purely and simply canceled. Things like this are happening all around. So what we see around the world is extremely worrying and it includes all rights being taken away. If we go down the road we cancel everything that was won in terms of human rights during last 200 years. So as I said- vaccines are just a kind of example and top of the iceberg. They just show mechanisms in terms of corporate lobbies and interests taking over in the human rights battle, but the same is happening in all major areas. I am actually not a health specialist neither a human right specialist but the exactly same things are happening in relation to food sovereignty, a topic I have been working on since 10 years or so. People being prevented to save and exchange seeds, land grabbing, farmers being prevented to go out to the fields, GMOs being enforced all around the planet, patents on seeds and patents on plants and animals. Same mechanisms, same companies, same interests. Peasants rights standing lower than so called „public health and safety” (UN declaration on peasants rights, adopted in dec 2019. A very good declaration but worth nothing if issues of public health and safety arise, nobody has any right any more). So that’s the bigger picture.

I won’t write more on vax , because it is not my main topic as already said, but there is plenty of materials to research if you are interested. Because despite the censorship you can read leaflets, read the laws, the official governmental sites where some side effects are reported, the indemnisation funds for vax injured people, the list of companies financing The WHO, and so on and so on. And no its not the same neither the same number of vaccines we got when we were kids, not even the same list of diseases. Anyway, I think with the new Covid ones, even the more pro vax people start to wonder how possible you can say after few months it is safe to inject something that actually impacts your gene (DNA) expression, with no long term studies, no representative population groups, actually nothing done according to very basic science principles. But I am completely for the right of INDIVIDUAL people to decide for themselves what is more risky- to take it or not. Same concerns abortion, sexual orientation or education choices.

Well guys, I hope it gives some food for thought but now I really have to take care of the topics I am really involved in which are basically regenerative agriculture and food sovereignty. But the thing is if we loose our human and civil rights we loose it all at once, and if I am not allowed to go out or buy and sell food, that’s more annoying tan just having bad agriculture subsidies scheme.

Best
Sonia

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Ordo Iuris is just one of many NGOs fighting for SOME human rights and they are specialized in some topic, not others. They also have a clear let’s say conservative or maybe right wing orientation if you wish which means they are rather against abortion from what I see and against LGBT which is not fully prochoice, although they seem good defenders of parental rights. For me being pro choice and pro human rights exceeds all left/right divisions which I consider totally artificial and actually hiding the true topics. Human rights or human bodies are not right or left they just are. Individual choices are either possible either not. But the current political split is done in a way than no existing political party supports individual freedoms in all main aspects of life. I think this divisions are enhanced on purpose because instead of focusing on the humanity, we focus on left fighting right. So for example left is in theory progressive because of LGBT and women topics but actually enhances governmental control through taxes, medical centralization, control of education and no religious freedom either (it is anti religious). Right is in theory more liberal in terms of economic rights and cares more about parental rights and education choices, but actually no religious freedom either (it is basically for one religion against others), and its certainly more against woman rights. So that’s like a choice between the red prison and the blue prison. In both cases you end up in prison. So I would be very surprised to see any bigger recognized institution working outside of this very old left/right scheme, which basically comes back to communism and fascism. Which we have already seen in action enought o be sure we never want to repeat any of them. So It may be shocking for some but I have not voted in last elections because I refuse to make a choice that is not a real one.

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Sonia, thank you for sharing your thoughts on those highly polarizing the society topics. I would say that the rights for the healthcare are not just individual, they are collective, and what may not have value to you today may have value to the entire population, the entire way of life tomorrow. Concerning the vaccine, there is a general trend towards mistrust in the current medical system in Poland, we were talking about that during one of our webinars, please check the documentation Dokumentacja: Webinar Czym jest dla Ciebie opieka? Jak Ty pomagasz innym w trakcie pandemii?

Wolha
Thank you for this reply, but in general I highly disagree with labelling anything as collective. This is a very communist approach- collective farms, collective responsibility. Used also by fascist regime to punish people during war time. Human rights are not and never were collective they are based on principle that all and every human being has the same rights as individual unique person human and not as just a part of a collective. Owing your own body is a basic individual right. The collective is not something that exists it is a fictional concept, the same concerns „public health and safety”. The collective was always used in extreme left regimes and history already proved that there is no collective „good” if there is no individual good. At the opposite of „collective concept” are real living people who are not just statistical numbers. If you start to use the collective approach, there you get an excellent argument to destroy also any minorities rights. I do agree with the concept of common good but this is something different which means that they are some given resources on Earth that all people shall have a right to access, benefit from, and preserve them for future generations as well. Basic resources include air, water and land. This is the life basic. I also could eventually agree with the concept of social justice but it is also something that has been twisted and misused so that is another conversation. And as far as the questioning of vaccines is concerned, vaccines are not manufactured in Poland, neither by polish companies as far as I know so this has in my opinion not much to do with the mistrust in the polish health system which obviously is not in good condition since quite a long time. The main reason for the mistrust in the medical system in Poland is just a very high cost of the obligatory health taxes (ZUS), which basically hits mostly medium and small enterprises but in general is a big burden for the economy and any entrepreneurship, coupled with a worsening access and level of services and low effectiveness (and the necessity to use paid services even though you do pay the obligatory health insurance). The mistrust in vaccines on the contrary is a very global issue (and now with the pandemic has become a really planetary one) as already said. Its related to huge corporate interests, enormous amounts of money, politics, monopols, biodata ownership and body ownership, and not just purely medical questions which would probably require to get into another discussion and as we are not healthcare practitioners its maybe not the right place to do it. Still I am very in favor of a free health care for all but you have to distinguish health care and service to others from global population control mechanisms. Summing up, I do not believe in collective responsibility, only individual one, and there is no responsibility when you are not allowed to make decisions. If the government decides whether you should give birth or not, have a chemo or not, getting a flu shot or not, it means you are made actually totally irresponsible about your own life under the cover of being „collectively responsible”. It is both illogical and using people’s good intentions to actually deprive them of their basic civil rights. It uses the mechanism and argument of sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others, and there is a lot of playing on these emotions lately. The point is this is not logical and also it is not true. It is only by preserving the individual rights of humans that we can help humanity.

Best

Hello @Sonia, my name is Alberto. I just wanted to thank you for what you wrote. I can’t read Polish, and really appreciate that you made the effort write in English. As you say, food for thought.

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Hello Alberto,

Always glad to share. Happy New Year to You !

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Abortion is opposed based on moral or religious grounds, but the ban leads to the psychological harm to a woman and to an unwanted child as well. Maybe a woman wants an abortion because she cannot care for the child and provide a healthy home environment.

Legalized abortion means that there are less unwanted children. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in their book “Freakonomics” prove that abortion was one of the greatest crime-lowering factors in American history.

In New York, California, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, women got the right to abortion at least two years before it was legalized throughout the United States. Between 1988 and 1994, violent crime in the early-legalizing states fell 13% compared to the other states; between 1994 and 1997, their murder rates fell 23% more than those of the other states.

So, unwantedness leads to child poverty and high crime rates while legalized abortion is good for the society because it brings less crime. @Ja-Rek, @Pracownica, @matka, @JustMe, @Pepe, @mariolamayra, @ALaAl, @Adam, @Sonia, @AndrzejMazur, @EwaSJ, @michal.trzesimiech, @EwaJ-L, @miloskonjovic82, @Justin, @Wiciu, @Annaz, @Ewa_Dryjanska @johncoate

Although I am totally supporting legalization of abortion, the correlation between the data you are providing seems a bit too general to take as a conclusion that there is a direct link in between legal abortion and crime rates. Those early legalizing states might have adopted other measures that impacts the crime rate, maybe also related to woman rights or not, or other conditions like economic, political, cultural, could have impacted it. I am not saying there is no link, I am just saying the provided data are not precise enough to make that conclusion. Although it is quite obvious that unwanted kids could end up as criminals. Still saying “legalised abortion brings less crime” is somehow a simplification and shortcut of the whole situation.

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I had read the book Wolha is refering tom and honestly did not remember this correlation. Like you, I was also frowning while reading the above,

But by looking up things it turns out they remade the analysis 20 years after, with additional data, and the model holds up to at least an ongoing academic debate: New research linking abortion and crime reduction resurfaces old debate

In social science, it’s very hard to establish causation, a direct cause-effect links between phenomena, let alone to extrapolate findings from the US case to Poland or others, but it is an nonetheless an interesting thing to think about: What happens when you reduce the number of unwanted children, whether by legalising abortion or other measures? But do benefits of any public policy matter if the goal is not to solve the particular problem the benefits address?

If the goal is not to offer women freedom to decide for their own bodies, or uphold their right to privacy, (on the contrary!) then no policy that addresses that will go through. This looks more of a social justice debate that throughout history only got solved by mass protest movements, influential and charismatic leaders to prompt them… by the way are there such rising stars in Poland, where one could put their hopes in?

This is a beautiful statement.

that’s strange that you don’t remember the chapter dedicated to the Nicolae Ceausescu’s policies

It’s not so much about the chapter, it’s the ideas…and associations. And the case of Romanian abortion law had a different idea: that the wave of unwanted children in Romania was the same generation that came to age to (basically) build the revolution and overthrow the regime. Talk about karma.
Anyway, a very seductive idea, I’ll just leave it at that :thinking: