Poland’s women are planning a series of nationwide protests after the country’s rightwing government last night fulfilled the last formal step for the near-total ban on abortion to become effective.

The prelude to the events was last night, when thousands took to the streets in dozens of locations across Poland, venting anger at the government, which pandered to the demands of the Catholic church and the most conservative portion of the electorate.

The government published the October ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal banning abortion in cases when the foetus is ill or damaged. The publication was the last formal step to make the ban official and immediately effective – from last night.

The government has held up the publication for over three months after mass protests erupted in October following the Tribunal’s ruling. It is now poised to face a new wave of rallies and demonstrations amidst the fragilely stable COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic situation.

“We are ready to respond effectively in the streets and [the government] is going to regret it,” one of the leaders of Women’s Strike, a pro-choice and anti-government NGO, told Gazeta Wyborcza.

“No to fanaticism! No to fundamentalism! Women are never going to give up. We are strong and wise and can decide for ourselves,” popular actress and feminist Maja Ostaszewska said in an Instagram post.

The rallies will also take place when Poles are increasingly frustrated by the protracted coronavirus restrictions and the sluggishly moving efforts to vaccinate people. The government prolonged most restrictions today until February 14, pending revision closer to that date.

Pro-government media have already portrayed the protest organisers and the protesters as irresponsible and risking other people’s lives by mass gatherings during a pandemic. 

“It’s obvious that any gatherings – regardless of what they are about – will provide the virus with an opportunity to spread,” Health Minister Adam Niedzielski told a news conference today.

But the October protests did not result in a significant growth in new infections. How they will pan out now is unclear, however, after the discovery of the more contagious strain of the coronavirus, the same that has pushed up the UK’s infection rate recently. 

The Tribunal, which the co-ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party stacked with loyalists, making it effectively a government tool to manipulate issues of the constitutionality of the law, ruled in October on a motion submitted in 2019 by a group of conservative lawmakers.

Terminating pregnancy in case of foetal defects is against Poland’s Constitution as it violates the right to life, the Tribunal said. After the ruling, Polish women will only be able to have an abortion in cases of rape, incest, and if the life of the woman is in danger.

Following the publication of the ruling, there quickly appeared accounts of doctors who said women awaiting abortion due to foetal defects could no longer have it. 

“Women do not feel safe … because they know that when a termination is required, it will not be available in Poland. They are concerned about their health and that they will be forced to carry on the pregnancy and watch their child die right after giving birth,” gynaecologist Anna Parzyńska told private broadcaster TVN24.

Abortion due to foetal abnormalities made up nearly all of some 1,100 legal abortions performed in Poland last year. Women’s rights organisations estimate that the real number of women having an abortion in Poland is between 100,000 and 150,000.

PiS has long tried to live up to the wishes of conservative and Catholic church-linked parts of its electorate by tightening Poland’s already stringent abortion laws. But an attempt to do so fizzled out in 2016, as the ruling party backed down when faced with mass protests.