WATCH: Polish Pro-Choice Activists Give Sliema A Fresh New Feminist Mural
Polish pro-choice activists have been mobilised since Poland’s courts tightened its abortion restrictions last month. In their latest local action, they gave Sliema a fresh new mural in honour of the women’s strike movement.
Just off Qui-Si-Sana is the new feminist mural, featuring a woman peering out of a vagina accompanied by the words “Polish Women’s Strike” and the iconic red lightning bolts – a symbol of recent protests.
The red around the woman also alludes to the costumes worn in dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” in which women’s bodies are controlled and segregated according to their ability to reproduce.
Last month, Poland’s top courts regressed its already strict abortions laws, ruling that terminating pregnancies in the case of foetal defects is unconstitutional.
The decision, which effectively banned 98% of legal abortions, has sparked a global backlash with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest the ban.
Meanwhile, Polish expatriates in Malta joined the local pro-choice scene and held their own demonstrations.
The Eastern European state already had some of the strictest abortion laws worldwide, but even with this latest restriction, their laws are more liberal than the complete abortion ban that exists in Malta.
This is because pregnancy terminations in Poland are allowed in cases of rape, incest or if the mother’s health is at risk. There are no such exceptions for pregnant people in Malta.
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