For instance, in a study of Dutch women with lipedema, 64.2% of the participants reported the onset of lipedema at the age of 10 to 19 years . We investigated the sociodemographic http://thenorthparkoffice.com/filipino-families/ and clinical characteristics of Polish women with lipedema, their quality of life and its factors. Women’s rights organizations and parliament members of the opposition Lewica party are collecting signatures for a civic initiative bill, “Legal Abortion Without Compromise,” which would permit abortion without restriction as to reason up to the twelfth week of pregnancy. It would permit abortion after 12 weeks in cases of risk to the person’s mental or physical health, a non-viable pregnancy, or pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Since the 2020 ruling, the Parliament has adopted two resolutions that not only condemned the violations of women’s rights in Poland but also urged its government to guarantee access to safe, legal and free abortion services.
- Firstly, we must remember that women’s rights are fundamental rights, and that member countries have a duty to uphold them.
- The ruling spurred the country’s largest public protests in decades, led by women human rights defenders.
- The results indicated the higher the severity of symptoms related to pain, heaviness, and swelling the lower the quality of life, and that depression severity mediated this relationship.
- The current study provides initial information on screening questions, lipedema symptoms, and comorbidities, pointing to the areas needing in-depth investigation.
Activists and women’s rights organizations report that the ruling is having a significant chilling effect as medical professionals fear repercussions even in situations where abortion remains legal. Women human rights defenders and civil society organizations advocating for the ruling to be overturned and for reform of Poland’s abortion law have faced threats of violence and several protestors have been prosecuted.
Quality of life, depression severity, and lipedema symptoms
Against the background of the European Commission’s reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact , this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor. Weronika Grzebalska is a sociologist, an assistant professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a RethinkCEE fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US. Her work focuses on militarism, security, right-wing https://parkableweb.com/home/an-introduction-to-traditional-chinese-culture-shen-yun-learn-resource/ politics and gender politics in central Europe in the neoliberal era.
Previously, over 90 percent of the approximately 1,000 legal abortions annually in Poland were on these grounds. The ruling came as Covid-19 pandemic restrictions made travel for health care prohibitively difficult and costly. The ruling spurred the country’s largest public protests in decades, led by women human rights defenders.
Demand for Action as Poland Tramples Women’s Rights
In the meantime, following Western countries such as the USA, Australia, the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany, owing to online sources, women have started to organize and form patient support groups. The increased interest in the condition has been reflected by the number of articles on lipedema in the popular press and other media. However, the prevalence of lipedema, patients’ quality of life, clinical characteristics, comorbidities, and psychological functioning in Poland have not previously been scientifically investigated . This knowledge is needed to advance the process of scientific investigation of the condition, draw attention to lipedema and increase evidence to confirm the importance of the condition, its impact on the quality of life and inform guidelines for evidence-based care. In this study, for the first time, we sought to evaluate and describe the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of Polish women with lipedema and to investigate factors related to their quality of life. The current study is the first to explore quality of life in women with lipedema in Poland, and it has a number of limitations. Participation in the study was voluntary, and a link was provided in an online social media support group, which might have created selection bias.
Kaczynski, leader of the populist ruling party, Law and Justice, spoke Saturday about the demographic challenges of “far too few children” being born as he rallied support for his party ahead of next year’s parliamentary election. The group said there were many reasons for country’s low birthrate, including Poland’s de facto prohibition of abortion, a lack of access to sexual education and in vitro procedures, inflation, a housing shortage and a lack of access to day care centers.
As Polish Women Flock Towards Volunteer Defense, the Left Remains Inept
The anti-abortion ruling’s anniversary comes amid increasing tensions between Poland’s government and the European Union after an October 7 Constitutional Tribunal ruling rejecting the binding nature of EU law. It followed a series of EU Court of Justice rulings that the Polish government’s weakening of judicial independence breaches EU law. The European Commission said it “will not hesitate to make use of its powers” under EU treaties to ensure application of EU law and protect people’s rights. U.S. women can learn from strategies Polish women have deployed, said Giselle Carino of Fòs Feminista, an activist organization that fights for women’s rights around the world. The failure of the outlaw bill in 2016 was seen as a success for abortion-rights advocates in the country, though the restrictions remain.
Next, Kacpura and groups like hers forged alliances with feminist groups abroad so Polish women could safely consult legitimate doctors online and either schedule procedures or get prescriptions for the “morning-after pill,” which is then mailed to their homes. Kacpura helped organize the massive “Black Monday” street demonstrations across Poland six years ago, which forced the Law and Justice government to back off on plans to ban all abortions, even in cases of rape, which its allies in the powerful Roman Catholic Church had been pushing for.
Pacifist stances on the left do not fully explain this inaction, given that societal resilience can take many forms, including the non-violent, civic and civilian-based. So far, the opposition has been largely reactive, criticising defence-related developments as dangerous and party-driven—evidently unaware that similar changes are also occurring in more stable liberal democracies in the Baltic Sea region. This state of affairs created pertinent gender gaps in defence-related knowledge and skills in Polish society. In 2014 the Public Opinion Research Centre reported that only 6 per cent of women recalled undergoing military training and 22 per cent training in civil defence . When swaths of youth took to the streets in 2020 to protest against the Law and Justice government over its abortion ban, analysts proclaimed a social revolution was emerging in the country.
Poland’s authorities should end efforts https://absolute-woman.com/european-women/polish-women/ to undermine reproductive rights and weaken protections from gender-based violence. They should commit to protecting women human rights defenders who have faced ongoing threats and attacks since the October 2020 decision.
