WOMEN across Poland took strike action today in protest against the banning of abortions in cases involving congenitally damaged foetuses.

It was the seventh straight day of demonstrations against the decision, made by Poland’s highest court and backed by its right-wing government.

The constitutional court’s ruling last Thursday triggered daily mass demonstrations, with anger directed at the Catholic church and the ruling Law and Justice party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

The ruling denies legal abortions to women even in cases where a child is sure to die on birth. 

It means that abortions will only be valid in cases of rape or incest, or to protect a mother’s life.

Today women stayed away from work and school and refused to do domestic chores.

The Women’s Strike, the key organisers of the protests over the past week, called the action under the slogan: “We are not going to work.”

“I am so furious. They have no right to decide about my life, about my personal decisions, about my future,” a student protester in Warsaw, Julka Wojciechowska, said.

“They don’t understand young people. They don’t understand the world now but they are trying to regulate our lives. We will never allow that.”

Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski vowed “decisive action” by the police “in the face of further attempts of similar acts of aggression and desecration announced by the leaders and organisers of the protests.”

Deputy Prime Minister Kaczynski accused protesters of seeking “to destroy Poland” and called on his party’s supporters to defend churches “at all costs.” 

In an attempt to discredit the protesters, a state-TV headline on Tuesday read: “Left-wing fascism is destroying Poland.”