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Near-total abortion ban in Poland
A constitutional tribunal rules that abortions for fetal abnormalities violate the country’s constitution.
A constitutional tribunal in Poland ruled Thursday that abortions for fetal abnormalities violate the country’s constitution, effectively imposing a neartotal ban in a nation that already had some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe.
The debate over a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, a divisive issue in a staunchly Roman Catholic country, mirrors the bitter polarization of a society caught between traditional religious values and more liberal ideas.
In the ruling, the tribunal’s president, Julia Przylebska, said that allowing abortions in cases of fetal abnormality legalized “eugenic practices with regard to an unborn child, thus denying it the respect and protection of human dignity.”
Because the Polish Constitution guarantees a right to life, she added, terminating a pregnancy based on the health of the fetus amounted to “a directly forbidden form of discrimination.”
Before the decision, which cannot be appealed, Poland permitted terminations only for fetal abnormalities, a threat to a woman’s health, or in the case of incest or rape.
But in practice, the overwhelming majority of legal abortions — 1,074 of 1,100 performed last year — resulted from fetal abnormalities.
Abortion rights advocates say those numbers reflect the restrictions already in effect, which make it all but impossible for Polish women to obtain a legal abortion, prompting them to seek illegal abortions or go abroad.
“In practice it takes weeks, sometimes months,” to obtain a legal abortion, said Karolina Wieckiewicz, a lawyer and activist with the group Abortion Without Borders. “Some people decide to risk the battle in Poland; others look for alternatives.”
Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and the opposition’s candidate in last summer’s presidential election, denounced the ruling and accused the government of effectively “tightening the abortion law” in an effort “to cover up their inefficiency in the fight against the coronavirus.”
President Andrzej Duda welcomed the court’s decision, his spokesman, Blazej Spychalski, said in an interview with the Polish Press Agency. “We are expressing our satisfaction that the tribunal stood on the side of life,” he said.
The government has been at loggerheads with the European Union, of which Poland is a member, over minority and women’s rights. It has also been criticized for compromising the independence of the judiciary, including the constitutional tribunal, which is supposed to be the main check on the governing party. But the bloc has failed to tame Poland’s illiberal drift.
“The European Union does not want to get involved,” said Barbara Nowacka, an opposition lawmaker who had cowritten a letter appealing to the tribunal’s president, Przylebska. “We are left to fend for ourselves, with a barbarian law.”
Women’s rights advocates say that the tribunal’s decision will in some cases force women to give birth to terminally ill children and will amount to an effective ban on abortion — something the government has not been able to accomplish through legislation.