Poland Abortion Laws

Article Written By Ananya Nayar, Website edited by Misaki Tomiyama

Over the past two weeks, Polish women have protested the streets of Poland against a new law proposed on the 30th October that bans the right of safe abortions. Law enforcement was seen with pepper spray to disperse crowds. Poland is a largely conservative country where nationalism is seen in society.

Image by Zorro2212 and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Poland is one of the small number of countries in the world to proscribe abortion after many years of permissive legislation during the Communist rule.

The abortion ban was a pro-life decision, and it went with Poland’s ‘right to life’ constitution. However, there were two conditions against the abortion outlaw, being that abortions should be permitted if the pregnancy puts pressure or risks a women’s health, and if the pregnancy was due to incest or sexual assault. Even earlier, Polish abortion laws were considered the strictest in Europe and less than 2,000 abortion cases would be carried out each year, before the ban there were up to 120,000 estimated women Poles who would seek abortion overseas or illegally. People have been protesting pro-choice for decades, even in 2016 women protested against the decision that illegal abortion in Poland would result in a 5 years jail penalty.

Many protesters are worried that women will forcibly have to go into labour, leading to health issues or child abandonment. Many also feel this is going against the UN’s ‘Convention on the rights of a Child’ law which declares a child should be protected before and after birth. The pro-choice protests are also objecting that this is against Human Rights.

The protests have also been quite violent, with vandalism, pepper spray and water used to disperse the hundreds fulminating.