Women march in Polish cities to demand abortion rights

Polish abortion rights proponents, most of them women, are marching in Warsaw and elsewhere in Poland to express their opposition to a proposal in parliament to further tighten the country’s already restrictive abortion law. Hundreds took part in a march in Warsaw on Wednesday but it wasn’t immediately clear how many took place in other cities. The turnout appeared far smaller than similar marches which mobilized huge crowds in 2016. The march, organized by a group known as the Women’s Strike, comes after lawmakers voted recently to refuse to consider a proposal to liberalize the abortion law and moved forward with a separate proposal to tighten the law. Abortion is illegal in most cases in heavily Catholic Poland, and some conservative lawmakers are seeking to restrict it further.