Outrage built in Poland over the weekend after the ruling party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was accused of being out of touch following his remarks made on Saturday which partly blamed the country’s low birth rate on young women drinking too much alcohol.
“If, for example, the situation remains such that, until the age of 25, girls, young women, drink the same amount as their peers, there will be no children,” said the 73-year-old politician. He also claimed that for an average man to become an alcoholic, he would have to “drink excessively for 20 years” but “a woman only two.”
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These remarks have since drawn widespread criticism from opposition politicians, activists as well as celebrities some of whom have in turn partly blamed the leader of the ruling party, Law and Justice, and his policies.
This includes increased restrictions on abortion which have discouraged some women who sought to have children, while others have reportedly cited difficulties in raising a family amid Poland’s soaring inflation which is reaching nearly 18%.
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On Monday, leftwing politician Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, while speaking to the reporters called Kaczynski “a patriarchal old geezer” and said we could laugh and joke about this but “it’s a serious, tragic matter.” While a lawmaker with the liberal Civic Coalition (KO), Katarzyna Lubnauer, called the 73-year-old “out of touch” and dubbed his remarks nonsensical and “insulting to women”.
Meanwhile, Women’s Strike, a rights group in Poland, said that there are many reasons for the country’s low birthrate, including its de facto prohibition of abortion, lack of access to sexual education and in vitro procedures, inflation, housing shortage and so on. The traditionally Roman Catholic country has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe which allowed very few abortions before 2020.
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However, a new ruling women can no longer terminate pregnancies even in cases of the fetus having serious abnormalities and is not viable after birth, which sparked protests across the country. According to data from the World Bank, the number of births per woman in the central European nation declined from three children per woman in 1960 to 1.2 in 2003.
(With inputs from agencies)
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