Not necessarily. Of course the Left is going to muster up enough people to protest. It doesn't mean they aren't a loud minority like the protests in here.
Riiight, since I'm Polish I'll add a few words on the subject.
Also typing from phone, so I will keep this relatively short, though a full essey would be needed.
In total, about 67% of Poles support the previously existing "abortion compromise". Some 19% wants law to be more liberal, about 14% wants it more restrictive.
The protests we see are more complicated then "just" abortion issue, however given how well organized and funded they are, with "liberal media", academics and groups / organisations known to be sponsored by "Open Society Foundation" all in lockstep, we could be looking at another "colour revolution" sponsored by "you-know-who" (ROTFL @ the pun).
That's just a theory though.
However, the abortion issue appears to be the proverbial spark that lit the fuse of discontent that's has been brewing for quite some time.
Law and Justice came to power over previously ruling Civic Platform over issues such as: graft, corruption, appalling arrogance of disconnected politicians living in friendly media bubble, nepotism, country and state apparatus being completely dysfunctional to the point of the state basically coming apart at it's seams, authorities being "strong" in minor cases of crime / against "little people", yet completely helpless in cases of "big" (well-connected) crime / corruption cases. And let's not forget "amazingly common" cases of politically inconvenient people suffering "serial suicides".
All while the CP had it's fingers stuck in their ears singing "all is well, all is good".
Which it was, but only for them and their cronies.
Not so for the rest of the population, it is estimated some 2-2,5 million Poles left the country because of unemployment during their reign that saw the second emigration wave (first was after we entered EU).
All in all the CP loosing power was fully deserved, they've thought they'd rule forever as they "had nobody to loose against".
Then came out the "tapes of truth" scandal, where important CP politicians were secretly recorded and everybody got to see what it really looks like behind the curtains, and what they think of the population.
(Given how utterly, slavishly servile Law and Justice is to US, with the US ambassador acting as province governor in all but name, my personal theory is that it was the US, not Russia as some claimed, that was behind this "soft regime change". Especially as CP was / is a client of German interests, and Russia has no reason to undermine Germans like that, especially not when knowing the most likely replacement "likes" Russia about as much as Hitler "liked" the Jews... Law and Justice basically hate Russia more then they love Poland.)
CP lost soundly, Law and Justice took power on promise of setting things right.
Which, to some degree, they did or at least were seen trying to do - that is they managed to "sell themselves" as champions of the common people, while the CP couldn't give less of a damn about "them unwashed masses", caring only about circlejerk of friendly media and self-appointed "elites".
Basically France prior to sage advice of eating cakes in absence of bread...
But as usual in politics, the L&J became victims of their own success. Arrogance, "we know better then you", graft, corruption, incompetence, nepotism, waste of public money with grandiose declarations nothing ever comes out of, and much ridiculed propaganda (seriously, our state television is compared to N.Korean one, and not without reason...) became their norm.
Just like CP before them.
There was a publicity stunt about emergency buy of medical equipment from China, the list of what actually arrived had to be revised time and again because "stuff grew legs" and money went for undelivered items, while the purchase was made via company of some known arms dealer and Minister's of Health buddy /
skiing instructor.
Same minister whose family LLC company during his term grew about 1000 times in capitalisation
without any transaction history to back it... Just imagine the same with a "normal person"...
Also, more and more their propaganda and observable reality are at odds. L&J had a slogan of "getting off our knees", in reference to CP being completely servile to Berlin and Merkel.
Only now they are even more servile to US and Ambassador Mossbacher acting in worst tradition of Russian governors during Partitions of Poland then CP at it's worse ever was.
Then is the matter of abortion issue that L&J made promises about when they won their first election, and did completely nothing about for whole first term and 2 years out of 5 of second term. Yet when they "wanted" - for example US ambassador told them to, laws would be written literally over night and passed (Sejm, Senate, presidential signature) in the morning.
And then the duck-tator of Poland, Kaczyński (kaczka is duck, so "duck-inski") decided that "all good and moral people should support this" and decided our agricultural sector, a powerhouse in export of kosher and halal beef and poultry, can do without this and to ban ritual slaughter for export.
Also to ban fur industry in which we're also a big player, and also which consumes animal waste products from meat industry, which would greatly raise costs for said meat industry as they would need waste incinerated, and that's very expensive and dominated by German companies.
So basically kiss of death for small, family owned companies that will be wiped out and replaced by big internationals.
There were massive protests, so the duck-tator "relented" by "reducing" ritual slaughter ban only to beef, leaving poultry legal.
Only that beef is mostly family business, while poultry is dominated by big international corporations.
Cue more protests...
Also, during L&J time, pork industry has been gutted under pretense of fighting swine flu. Swine flu that is spread by frozen carcasses of pigs delivered in car boots and dropped by "unknown perpetrators" next to independent pig farms. Then the pigs get culled on sheer suspicion of being infected with no legal recourse.
Kaczyński is an old guard "big state", "tax and spend" socialist who larps as conservative (mostly do to how our political scene evolved and who got which role) but hates private business, considers making a profit for yourself something deeply suspicious and immoral, and tries to re-enact pre-WW2 "Sanacja" government that likewise hated private business and did all it could to make everything state-run (by their own cronies of course).
CP OTOH was all about "privatise (at firesale prices) everything as long as we can charge a commission, otherwise do as Berlin tells us to".
This was followed by well observable hypocrisy of L&J in case of elections - when they needed to win presidential election earlier this year, it was "perfectly safe, virus is in retreat". Once they won, "more restrictions since we need to stop the epidemic".
Of course there were other issues, just to name a few:
Well liked journalists got kicked out of public radio sender, a popular song was "censored out" of a hit list over high crime of being critical / highlighting hypocrisy and double standards of L&J leaders, and so on.
Remote education turned out to be a total failure.
Medical system likewise is throat-deep in shit.
With a side of blowing a mountain of cash on preparing for holding elections by remote voting, nothing was done, money was wasted by one of their cronies.
Nepotism is the norm, and all state owned companies and public institutions are being taken over by family members of ruling party (though that's kind of standard procedure, everybody does that).
All in all, social discontent was rising slowly but surely, abortion issue seems to be proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
So when you look at the protests, it's not just "in favour of abortion", it's also "against the government" with abortion being a small (or not so small) part of greater whole.
And all above is just scratching the surface, one could write a Magisterium Thesis on all the complicated, multi-layered factors at play here.
www.neogaf.com
www.nytimes.com
