A controversial proposal to ban abortion in Poland appears to have collapsed after senior politicians from the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) backed away from it amid mass protests and after a parliamentary committee urged MPs to vote it down. Jarosław Gowin, the minister of science and higher education, said on Wednesday that the protests had “caused us to think and taught us humility”. Among the PiS committee members that voted to reject the bill was Krystyna Pawłowicz, who before Monday’s protest denounced opponents of the abortion ban as “fans of killing babies” who should be “ashamed” of themselves. The senate speaker, Stanisław Karczewski, said on Wednesday that Poland’s upper house of parliament would not initiate work on a bill to further restrict Poland’s abortion law. “In previous anti-government protests, it was our parents’ generation on the streets,” says Aleksandra Włodarczyk, 28, a bank administrator who participated in Monday’s protest.

Source: The Guardian October 05, 2016 13:18 UTC