Protesters target churches over Poland's near-total abortion ban

WARSAW: Protesters targeted Catholic churches across Poland on Sunday in the fourth straight day of upheaval against a near-total ban on abortion in the EU country.

Demonstrators chanted "we've had enough!" and "barbarians" inside a church in the western city of Poznan, according to a video clip posted on social media, in scenes that were repeated across the deeply Catholic country.

The protesters were reacting to Thursday's ruling by Poland's constitutional court that an existing law allowing the abortion of damaged foetuses was "incompatible" with the constitution.

The verdict is in line with the position of Poland's powerful Roman Catholic episcopate and the governing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Protesters, brandishing placards bearing expletives and others saying "I wish I could abort my government", skirmished with police and supporters of the ban outside a landmark church in central Warsaw.

Local media also ran pictures of graffiti daubed on church walls in various cities and towns reading "Women's hell" -- the main slogan of the protests.

Thousands of people -- most of them women -- also rallied in the cities of Gdansk, Krakow, Lodz, Rzeszow as well as dozens of traditionally more conservative towns, echoing mass protests held across Poland since Thursday in defiance of strict limits on public gathering under anti-coronavirus measures.

Opponents of the ruling argue it puts women's lives at risk by forcing them to carry unviable pregnancies but supporters insist it will prevent the abortion of foetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome. 

There are already fewer than 2,000 legal abortions per year in Poland -- and the vast majority of those are carried out due to damaged  foetuses. 

But women's groups estimate that up to 200,000 procedures are performed illegally or abroad each year.

The abortion verdict drew condemnation from several human rights groups in Europe and the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organisation.