My #BLACKPROTEST

The stories in this volume describe contemporary Poland mostly from the perspective of medium-size cites and small towns. The authors, one of whom is a man, present the moment when they questioned the ordinary scheme of everyday life, the moment when the personal became political. Rebellion was born. Poland as seen by the contributors to this book is, above all, a land of hypocrisy. The Black Protest was a unique time when this hypocrisy was unmasked and rejected. The truth was finally stated – shouted out, in fact – about what it means to live one’s life in a country chosen by religious fundamentalists for an experimental battleground, the first stage of their effort to “re-Christianize Europe”. According to official statistics, 1055 legal abortions were performed in Poland in 2016. And how many illegal ones? Probably around 100,000. Thanks to pharmacological abortion, abortion tourism, and the silence pact of doctors, the general public knows little about the dramatic reality of the underground abortion, of the women who have lost their health or even their lives. Such incidents do occur – we know they do, because occasionally we hear news of a doctor who has lost his or her medical license as a result of an abortion-related incident. There are also media scandals – comparatively rare ones, considering the scale of the problem – such as the infamous “Chazan case,” where an ob-gyn professor forced his patent to give birth to a baby with no scull. Such stories rarely hit the headlines, because women who have been put through such trauma don’t often have the will and the strength to pursue legal action, or to collaborate with journalists.