Thousands of Polish women attend Czarny Piątek rally in Warsaw

I suppose you've looked in to my education background have you? Stick to the drink mate and try to interact with people as little as possible, to avoid embarrassing yourself.

Your arguments are arguments losers make, when they see they are losing. You don't like being challenged so you start to attack your opponent personally, despite knowing nothing about them.

There's so much unintended irony in that post that you must have bought it wholesale at Makro.

The salient issue in all of this is that the tens of thousands of ordinary women (the ones you insinuated might be 'paid' by a mysterious third party that nobody's seen or heard of; maybe the Invisible Woman) went out on the streets and got worldwide publicity. They, like the majority of Polish women (hared data confirms this) are unhappy with the current attack on their basic human rights.


Keep supposing, you've posted plenty of clues, and your writing style would not behove anyone considering the Cambridge Tripos.

Typical Jon, making stuff up again. What else can he do I suppose? He must be bored out of his mind.

I didn't insinuate that thousands of women were paid to attend. I was questioning where you got your information that none of them were paid.


Have you read social media posts by writers and 'journalists on the internet [you know, people who can write well]? Many of their posts have grammatical errors, spelling mistakes etc. You know why? Because they are written in a hurry and they don't care all that much about the grammar - they just want to make their point there and then. It's the same with me and a lot of people. Perfected grammar on an internet forum isn't exactly top of the priority list. Some of us don't have the kind of time on our hands as you do, to read over what we've written multiple times and make sure everything is grammatically tip top, while sipping on whatever the choice of alcoholic beverage is for the day. Keep drinking and posting Jon - your posts are providing us with a lot of laughs.

IDK why PiS is so adamant about this abortion thing... this isn't helping them out at all especially among female voters....

I think it's looked at from a moral standpoint. One of the key arguments that has been brought up recently, is that babies with downs syndrome often get aborted and it's currently legal to do in Poland. The majority of people with downs syndrome are capable of living an independent life and statistics show that 90% of them are happy [higher on average than people born with no illness, more of whom tend to be unhappy]. So the question is, why should it be legal to abort them, when it isn't legal to abort babies who will be born healthy, particularly since they can live their lives normally and are happy? Also, if we can abort babies who are born with an illness, perhaps we should also have the right to perform euthanasia on elderly people, who often pick up illnesses in old age? I know this is legal in some countries, but in Poland it is considered morally reprehensible, as life is sacred.

At first I was also quite against the idea of tightening an already strict abortion law, but after hearing their points, I can see what they are getting at.

WP, it's not so simple. Look at some figures - 40-50% of them have congenital heart disease, 60-80% have hearing problems, and they need constant help and support throughout their lives - something that isn't offered in Poland. They aren't born healthy, and they're not capable of living truly independent lives - so they effectively are a burden on the parents as the state simply doesn't provide for them, and society is largely unwilling to help them. They can rarely find ordinary jobs, and they also suffer from the onset of dementia much earlier than the rest of the population.

It's easy to be against it when you don't have a family, but imagine if you have one kid, and the second could have Down's syndrome. Would you be willing to sacrifice a lot for the older kid for the sake of the younger disabled one? Imagine having to tell your healthy older kid that he can't have many things because you need money for treatment/rehabilitation of the younger one as the society/government won't pay for it? Imagine knowing that if something happens to you and you can't work, the disabled child will receive almost no support from the government and you'll still have to look after them?


Nah, it's all about the Church support. The bishops have turned a blind eye to the things that PiS have been doing, but now they want something in return. It's really a bad situation for them - I imagine they'd be very happy for it to be kicked to the sidelines and ignored, but they can't ignore the voice of the bishops, especially when the threat is clear.

But as I said earlier, I don't think the law will pass. The Church has no real option - if they stop supporting PiS, what other alternative is there for them?

I take your point delph. In this case I would be more for pressuring the state to offer the families more support, than aborting these babies.

I personally feel that's a couple's decision - esp the woman's - not the state's. Yes, people with down syndrome tend to live happy productive lives. In fact, I see them often working at supermarkets. I have way more respect for people with these kind of problems than able bodied adults who don't work out of sheer laziness which is oftentimes rewarded by a socialist redistribution agenda.

However, some parent(s) are unable to devote the time or money for a child with DS or other issues. If I was a single dad or single mom working 2 low wage jobs just to make ends meet there's no way I could give the time/money required to give a kid like that the attention he/she deserves, I'd probably chose divorce.

IMO it's better to not have kids if you don't have the time or money to devote to it.

Like delph said, if the state had the ability to ensure a future for families in such a situation then it wouldn't be as big of a problem but at this point it doesn't. And even then I still look at it as unnecessary infringement into private bedroom life.

Blimey Dirk,I have to agree with every word you said....which surprised me.. :-)

Yes, this would be much, much better. People would feel less pressure to abort in this case, as they'd know that there was a comprehensive welfare net available. From what I know, the major issue is not when they're children, but their lives as adults - employers in PL are quite image-conscious and would never hire them unless the state paid their salaries.

The problem with banning it is that you simply push abortions abroad or underground. Middle class women can simply go abroad or to a private gynaecologist who won't ask questions - but poor women in a desperate situation can end up resorting to terrible ideas if they can't get a legal abortion provided by the state.

It's worth remembering that Poland was also the first country in Europe to permit abortion after rape, and it also allowed abortion for medical reasons as early as 1932.

I hear this type of argument made a lot and don't agree with it. The answer to dealing with bad things can't just be 'well if it's illegal it will be worse, so we should legalise it.' They've used the same logic for drugs, prostitution and other things.

I'm against abortions of sick children. I believe they have a right to life. Women do have a choice, they have a choice not to get pregnant. Once they do though, unless that pregnancy was caused by rape or their is a risk of them dying giving labour, they need to have the child. Nobody is forcing them to get pregnant and nobody is forcing them to take care of the child once it is born, if they don't believe they are able to. It's all about saving the life of the unborn baby, that's all.

Very much so; and it's worth remembering that the foetuses in question are not necessarily those of people with Down's Syndrome. They are of people who only a few years ago would not survive more than a few days or weeks and are often so profoundly disabled that if they are aware they exist at all, their short lives are wretched and full of suffering. there is no compassionate reason to carry such a foetus to term and every reason not to.


You did however insinuate that it was possible. Shameful.


False logic, since you fall into neither. By the way, I'm in a part of the world where alcohol is not readily available, though I don't think truth or reality are especially important to you..

Oh you'd be surprised.


I was thinking the same about you

That's not much of a response; not even on a par with the tacky internet memes produced by people who on the one hand oppose a woman having a severely and profoundly disabled foetus flushed out yet on the other hand aren't prepared to lift a finger themselves to try to make the person's short and miserable life less distressing if they are actually born.

Most women in this position are married and in loving relationships. And they do have to look after the dusabled child - the govt support proposal was a special bonus of 1500 zloty - half the wage of a cleaner in McDonalds.

I am against aborting healthy foetuses btw

So bribing them to keep someone 'alive' in misery.

Much better to let the woman herself decide; as the tens of thousands of Polish women who took part in Czarny Piątek wee saying.

It was apparently Kaczynski who came up with that figure. Of course he has no kids, never does any shopping and is driven everywhere so he has no idea how much that is worth

Quite. Nor any idea of the strain on a family and the (sad but true) financial cost to society of total care, something that far exceeds 1500 pln.

I suspect that a certain amount of this is driven by ideologues who are detached from the reality of the situation some people are in.

Did you see the reports of the Bishop of Ełk's comments last week? He actually said that a woman who has ben raped and takes a morning after pill is committing a greater crime than the rapist. No wonder religious observance is plummeting in Poland. Most people are too intelligent and too decent to want to listen to stuff like that.

BS, it is not about lets the women decide. Its about extending protection of the law to an unborn child. In other words the law will recognize that unborn child is not a bunch of cells, fetus or whatnot but a human being and hence got rights.


Who spread such a nonsense?

26 jon 26 I'm not that old as you. lol!

It is very much a cluster of cells and then a foetus.

Fortunately there is a huge strength of feeling against the appalling and cruel proposal.


Europe (and especially Poland) have changed a lot since you abandoned the country 26 years ago. Nevertheless, as the very profound and moving Polish women's Czarny Piątek has shown, people do still come out on the streets to assert their rights, and just as in the days of Solidarity, the regime eventually loses.

Jon, you're an idiot. I've tried to avoid that label for as long as I could, but you make it impossible to avoid it anymore. You're literally the definition of an idiot.

Evidently you're looking in a mirror. The Polish women who turned out on Friday to make their views on the proposed legislation clear are not doing this as an act of frivolity, are not "paid to attend" are not manipulated and are not, as Ironside dissmissively called them "commies".

They are for the most part intelligent and well-educated people who have the same duties towards society as other people in Europe and entirely appropriately expect the same rights over their bodies.

However much you can't handle that.

They are without a doubt a part of progressive ideology which has its philosophical roots in Marx BS. They're commies whether they realize it or not.

On this particular point I disagree with Ironside. I don't think communists and socialists and progressives are the same thing. They are all to the left for sure and have similar ideologies in many areas but aren't exactly the same.

For example, there are actively communist countries right now that don't support gay rights, so they couldn't be called 'progressive.' Also, many socialists are against communism, but for a socialist style society. It's complicated.

It's the same with the right, there are many strands who agree on many things, such as their dislike of the left for example, but don't agree in other areas. For instance, some people who are on the right in Poland are very pro-American and pro PiS, while others aren't, but yet they both of them see themselves as right wing.

Far older.

If there's any genuine political success story of the past few hundred years, it's liberalism; the freedom of expression that has allowed those Polish women to march on Friday is part of that.

Funny how liberalism, freedom of expression and all that is now much more tolerated by the right than the left, who try to shut down any thoughts they disagree with.

Exept that it certainly isn't; that is not but what a trope of the lowbrow right. At least the Polish women were able to express their views. I wish them well, though suspect that the dying yet dangerous embers of clericalism may make their struggle a hrd one.

Have you been living under a rock Jon?

Nobody is stopping these women from protesting. On the other hand, try inviting a right win lecturer to a university.

progressives, feminists ( at least so called second wave and all waves that follow) what have you are not liberals they are commies.