Support among the Polish public for allowing access to abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy has risen to 70%, the highest level ever recorded by pollster Ipsos.
The findings continue a trend that has seen support for abortion rights increase after the October 2020 constitutional court ruling that introduced a near-total ban on abortion, which is now only allowed if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or health or if it results from a crime such as rape.
Just after that ruling, polling by Ipsos for OKO.press, a liberal news outlet, found that 66% of respondents supported the right of women to have access to abortion up to the 12th week. That was 13 percentage points higher than in February 2019.
The figure of 66% was recorded again in May this year, but in the latest poll, carried out this month, it had risen to 70%. Meanwhile, those opposed to allowing abortion up to 12 weeks made up 24% of respondents, down from 35% in 2019.
In all age groups, a majority are in favour of liberalising access to abortion, ranging from 90% support among the youngest (18-29 years of age) to 59% among the oldest (aged 60 and above). Overall, support is slightly higher among women (73%) than men (68%).
However, while supporters of the centrist and left-wing opposition are overwhelmingly in favour of allowing abortion up to 12 weeks, just over half (51%) of those who back the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party are opposed. Only 37% of PiS supporters are in favour.
PiS has welcomed the near-total abortion ban. Its chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński, pledged to ensure that “even in cases where there is a very difficult pregnancy, when the child will inevitably die, when it is severely deformed, it will end in birth, so the child can be christened, buried and given a name”.
By contrast, the largest opposition group, Civic Platform (PO), recently declared support for abortion up to the 12th week. The Left (Lewica), the second-largest opposition group, has long supported abortion on demand.
Other polling has also shown growing support in recent years for liberalising the abortion law, though not with as strong support for access to abortion up to 12 weeks as found by Ipsos.
A year ago, United Surveys found that almost three quarters of Poles want to liberalise the abortion law. However, the largest proportion (43%) favoured returning to the situation before the constitutional court ruling, when abortion was allowed if a birth defect was diagnosed but not on demand. Only 31% favoured abortion on demand.
Earlier this year, another pollster, IBRiS, found that 62% of the public favour liberalising the abortion law while 27% are opposed.
The court ruling that introduced the near-total abortion ban triggered the largest protests in Poland’s post-communist history, with polls at the time showing that most of the public supported the demonstrations and were opposed to the verdict.
Main photo credit: Karolina Grabowska / Pexels
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
