Atheism will not save us. It is also necessary to protest against the restriction of reproductive rights in Prague – A2larm
On Monday, October 18, the first protests began against another bill that seeks to restrict access to safe and legal interruptions in Slovakia. Since 2018, almost two dozen legislative proposals with a similar intention have been submitted to the Slovak Parliament. Ten the current wants to extend the waiting period to interrupt or limit the provision of information on where and under what conditions abortion is possible.
We will not be silent
About 155 people took part in the Prague protest in front of the Slovak embassy. How to provide a feminist initiative It would hit people in a difficult economic and social situation and in remote regions, which already have such difficult access to research organization Choice. It would limit access to scientific knowledge and, conversely, increase the scope for the provision of misleading and unscientific information by church organizations. But as Slovakia and Poland have repeatedly said, conservatives seeking to curb women’s and reproductive rights are not concerned with protecting health or saving the soul, but with control over human bodies. They want to protect the so-called traditional family and they want a high birth rate – either in the same nation or at the same time of endless economic growth that cannot be done without labor.
The approach to women’s rights is also very conservative in our atheist country. We may be just a step away from the first legislative steps in our so-called traditional family.
Within the V4 countries, the Czechia is the only state where political elites do not try to limit abortions. So far, fears that this could start here as well are usually dropped from the table, saying that our famous atheism protects us from restricting reproductive rights. But this is far from a religious issue. It is a patriarchal pressure, an attempt to limit our rule over our own lives.
Advent of conservatives in the Czech Republic
In Poland, a law came into force in January this year, which shows an interruption even if he is seriously injured. People in Poland are thus forced to bear a fetus that has no chance of being born alive. Polish law presents such an ultraconservative approach that many people formally leave the Catholic Church because of it. In the much more secular Hungary, Orbán is also fighting for the traditional family. In addition to the oppression of LGBTQ + people, which already has a legislative form, Orbán’s government supports anti-interruption initiatives in the fight to increase the birth rate. Although the prime minister himself does not initiate legislative changes, he does grow a movement that wants to limit women’s rights. In Slovakia, as has already been the case here, efforts to prevent access to abortions have repeatedly escalated since the inauguration of the current government and the occupation of a parliament in which populists, ultraconservatives and fascists met.
After the last Slovak elections, many people celebrated that the result had finally ousted Robert Fico and Smer. However, democratic activists, feminists and anti-fascists have warned from the beginning that there is nothing to celebrate that the conservative composition of parliament means a threat to human rights and social solidarity. The loss of Andrej Babiš is celebrated in the Czech Republic and the truest Chamber of Deputies has been in office since the 1990s. In the Together coalition, both Christian Democrats and conservatives from the ODS and TOP 09 came to power, and even the overwhelming majority of the more conservative candidates succeeded in the “PirStan” coalition.
Petr Fiala is now associated mainly with his inspection of Hungarian anti-immigration fences or the rejection of marriage for all. But when he commented on Donald Trump’s political achievements last year during the US election, marked the fight against abortion for an “ethical conservative agenda”. At the same time, Trump’s rhetoric and politics led to such extreme bans as the one in Texas, which in practice makes abortion impossible. Marián Jurečka spoke about the need for anti-abortion laws when he joined the KDU-ČSL leadership (by the way, in Conversation with Jurečka for the Catholic magazine Duše a hvězda interrogating refers to same-sex couples as sodomy). Like many conservatives in Slovakia, he formulates his goal in such a way that it is an ideal attitude that no woman should even think about an abortion.
Such a social utopia is, of course, nonsense; Both coalitions are calling for tens of billions of government spending to be cut, and such measures will always affect low-income households. We see the same trend across the V4 countries in response to the pandemic. In countries where interruptions are limited, the safe option of abortion becomes even more inaccessible for women who have nowhere to go, where abortion is legal and to pay for the procedure abroad. Conservative anti-abortion arguments are therefore in stark contrast to the policies that their supporters are actually pursuing.
Rejection of secularism
As far as healthcare is concerned, Vlastimil Válek, who has according to Andrej Babiš to take over from 1 November, the contribution of the Minister of Health, supports the actions of the Alliance for the Family. It can be heard about it mainly in connection with spreading misinformation, panic attack and verbal on LGBTQ + community, but also fights for other “traditional values”, which are in addition to homophobia AND transphobia and restrictions on women’s rights. Like the Conservatives in Slovakia, the Alliance for the Family claims that it is fighting for the rights of women and children. At the same time, it wants to deprive women of the rights and protect adults, especially from information or the opportunity to safely search for their identity and express it.
The conservative right-wing government simply has no reason to celebrate. In addition, there have been two other strong arguments for a long time why the majority of the population ‘s approach to representing us will not save us – the Istanbul Convention and the Marian Column in the Old Town Square.
Art historian Milena Bartlová described in detail and well-founded, for example, in the collapse Kolaps, the relationship between the erection of the Marian Column and ultraconservative values. According to her, the column briefly symbolizes the rejection of secularism, progress and equality, which would probably be expected in a country where the church has little influence. Bartlová talks about the fact that the departure from secularism is a reaction to neoliberal politics – in which people lose security, such as work, social status and dignity. As a result, he hears the call for supposed traditional values, which are the so-called traditional family. In practice, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and restrictions on women’s rights are hidden in this concept.
Similarly to the Istanbul Convention, a document that deals primarily with gender-based violence, politicians reacted largely to radical liberal fabrication and compared it to totalitarianism or accused it of trying to invade our privacy and bring a “gender ideology” into Czech living rooms. This is described in detail by Johanna Nejedlová in the Quota podcast.
In short, the approach to women’s rights is also very conservative in our atheist country, they do not even talk about non-binary or trans-people. We may be just a step away from the first legislative steps in our so-called traditional family. there must therefore be no silence.
The author is a member of the free feminist collective For Free Uterus.