THE Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has governed Poland for the past year, does not scare easily. But the tens of thousands of black-clad women who filled city centres across the country on October 3rd seem to have shaken it. They were protesting against a bill to tighten Poland’s restrictions on abortion, which is already illegal in most cases. The bill would have banned it even in cases of rape and incest (but not when needed to save the mother’s life).
Lots of PiS MPs initially backed it. However, in the face of this so-called “black protest”, PiS retreated. On October 6th Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the party’s leader, who is the country’s most powerful figure despite having no government post, spoke of an “enormous misunderstanding”. Many of the PiS deputies who had earlier supported the ban abruptly changed their minds, voting it down.
Ever since coming to power in November, Poland’s government has been drawing fire at home and abroad. Warsaw has seen marches by tens of thousands of protesters against the government’s efforts to limit the powers of the constitutional tribunal and pack it with PiS supporters. Brussels is angry about…
