'A backlash against a patriarchal culture': How Polish protests go beyond abortion rights

Mass demonstrations have exposed underlying anger at political and religious interference in people's everyday lives

For 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarno toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.

Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people nightly defied a government ban on protests, taking to the streets from Warsaw to od, Pozna to Wrocaw, Gdask to Krakow.