First hospital fined for refusing to provide abortion under new Polish government rules

A hospital has been fined for refusing to provide a legal abortion in the first such case since the government recently introduced a requirement for publicly funded medical centres to offer such procedures.

Health minister Izabela Leszczyna announced on Monday that the Pabianice Medical Centre was fined 550,000 zloty (€126,300). She revealed that audit proceedings regarding two other medical facilities are also in the “final stages” and that they are also likely to be penalised.

Poland has one of Europe’s strictest abortion laws, with pregnancy only allowed to be terminated in two cases: if it threatens the mother’s life or health, or if it is the result of a criminal act (such as rape). In 2022, only 161 legal abortions took place in the country.

Yet even in cases where termination of pregnancy is legally permitted, women can face the additional hurdle of the so-called “conscience clause” that allows doctors to refuse to perform an abortion if it contradicts their beliefs.

Poland’s new government that took office in December has pledged to liberalise the abortion law. But progress on that front has been slow due to disagreements between members of the ruling coalition, which ranges from the left to centre right.

In the meantime, last month the health ministry issued a regulation stipulating that healthcare providers who receive public funds for providing obstetrics and gynaecology are obliged to offer abortions.

Hospitals that fail to do so can be fined up to 2% of the value of their contract with the National Health Fund (NFZ), the body that finances public healthcare in Poland. In the most serious cases, the NFZ can terminate its contract with the hospital.

At the moment, the NFZ does not carry out general checks on whether hospitals offer abortions as required. However, it does carry out inspections at facilities that have been subject to a complaint from a patient regarding failure to offer legally required procedures.

According to the health minister, the first such inspection was concluded on 13 June and resulted in the fine being issued against the Pabianice Medical Centre.

However, the management of that facility has refuted the claim that they failed to offer legal abortions. The hospital says it will appeal against the fine and, if that is not successful, will take legal action against the NFZ itself.

“We perform abortions in our hospital,” its director, Adam Marczak, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. “The complaint concerns one patient. The doctor refused her an abortion because she did not present a set of documents confirming the prerequisites for a legal procedure.”

In a further statement today, the hospital reiterated that it “did not deny the patient the right to an abortion, it only indicated that it was necessary for the patient to submit the final diagnostic results”.

Its spokeswoman also told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that “none of the doctors of the gynaecological and obstetrics department of the hospital used at that time or currently apply the so-called conscience clause”.

According to Gazeta Wyborcza, another of the hospitals under scrutiny for refusing abortions is the Institute of the Polish Mother’s Health Centre in Łódź.

However, its spokesman, Adam Czerwiński, told the newspaper that the issue related to “complaints by two patients [who], in the opinion of our doctors, did not have the documentation indicating the need for the procedure. Otherwise, they would not have been refused”.

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Main image credit: Jakub Wlodek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.