Leaders of Polish abortion protests acquitted of causing “epidemiological threat” during pandemic

A court has acquitted three of the leaders of the mass protests against Poland’s near-total abortion ban of endangering public health by organising the demonstrations during the height of the Covid pandemic. If found guilty, they could have faced prison terms of up to eight years.

Additionally, one of the leaders, Marta Lampart – the main leader of Women’s Strike (Strajk Kobiet), which organised the protests – was also acquitted on two further charges of insulting a police officer and of publicly praising the crime of vandalising churches.

Lampart was on trial alongside her colleagues Klementyna Suchanow and Agnieszka Czerederecka. Prosecutors accused them of “creating an epidemiological threat” by organising a series of protests in October, November and December 2020.

Those came in response to a ruling by the constitutional court on 22 October that introduced the near-total ban on abortion. They were the largest protests in Poland’s post-communist history, with hundreds of thousands of people coming out onto the streets.

They also came amid some of the worst moments in the Covid pandemic, with Poland recording the EU’s highest excess death rate in 2020. The protests took place despite strict lockdown measures at the time banning gatherings.

However, in a ruling issued today, a Warsaw court found that, while “there is no doubt that the accused were the faces of these gatherings”, prosecutors had not “documented and proved the causal relationship between the organisation of the protests and the threat to life or health”.

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The court noted that the protests were mass, spontaneous events. Moreover, “the accused called on people participating in the gatherings to keep their distance and wear masks that limited the transmission of the virus”, said judge Tomasz Julian Grochowicz, quoted by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

In fact, said the judge, the police’s actions during the protests, such as “kettling” protesters into small areas, were much more likely to have created a threat of transmitting the virus.

Regarding Lempart’s charge of insulting police by spitting at them, the court found it hard to accept an officer’s testimony that they had heard Lempart spit while wearing a mask amid loud mass protests.

Lempart was also accused of praising the crime of vandalising churches during an interview, when she that “people are really pissed off at church institutions” and “they should have expected this reaction and it will happen again…You have to do what you feel, what you think and what is effective and what they deserve”.

But today, the court acquitted her on that charge too, finding that what she said “must be treated as opinions and cannot constitute a basis for recognising it as an incitement to commit a punishable act”, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

Today’s rulings are not yet final and binding as they can still be appealed by either the accused or prosecutors.

The case against Lempart, Suchanow and Czerederecka was brought when prosecutors were under the authority of the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, which supported the near-total abortion ban and criticised those protesting against it.

PiS was replaced in power last December by a new, more liberal coalition led by Donald Tusk that has pledged to soften Poland’s strict abortion regime. However, so far it has failed to do so, with Tusk admitting that differences within the coalition over how far to liberalise the law may prevent them from doing so at all.

After today’s verdict was delivered, one of those acquitted, Czerederecka, said that, “in my opinion, this trial should not have taken place, because we, the taxpayers, will all pay for it”, reports news website Onet.

Lempart welcomed the verdict. But she also criticised the current authorities for not only failing to deliver on their promise to soften the abortion law, but also for continuing to “obsessively pursue abortion activists” who she said are still “interrogated by the police once a week”.

Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.