A group of 119 members of parliament have submitted a request to the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s top constitutional court, that could result in Poland’s abortion law, already among the strictest in Europe, being further tightened.
The MPs, from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party as well as the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) and centre-right PSL-Kukiz’15, argue that terminations carried out due to foetal abnormalites – which they called “eugenic abortions” – violate the constitution, reports state broadcaster TVP.
They want the tribunal to assess whether such abortions contravene four constitutional principles: human dignity, the right to life, the prohibition of discrimination, and the democratic rule of law.
A similar request to the Constitutional Tribunal was submitted by a group of PiS and Kukiz’15 MPs in 2017, but it expired at the end of the last parliamentary term this autumn.
Under Poland’s current abortion law, which was passed in 1993, abortion is only permitted under three circumstances: when pregnancy threatens the woman’s life or health; if pregnancy is the result of a criminal act (such as rape or incest); or if the foetus is seriously malformed.
The vast majority (over 90%) of the 1,000 or so legal abortions that take place in Poland each year are carried out due to the foetal abnormalities.
PiS has declared its support for ending “eugenic abortions”. The party’s leader – and Poland’s de facto leader – Jarosław Kaczyński said that his party would “strive to ensure that even very difficult pregnancies, when the child is condemned to death, is severely deformed, will end in birth, so that the child can be christened, buried, given a name”.
However, proposals to restrict the law led to mass “black protests” by women in 2016 and 2018, which in both cases forced PiS to back away from the legislative initiatives. The party has as a result faced criticism from conservative and far-right MPs, as well as the Catholic church, for not moving ahead with a ban on “eugenic abortion”.
The head of Poland's Episcopate has criticised PiS for failing to fulfil its promise to protect life from the moment of conception.
PiS is likely to face renewed pressure in its second term to tighten the abortion law, already one of Europe's strictest https://t.co/FVl2oG4HA7
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 14, 2019
Main image credits: Piotr Drabik/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Monika Prończuk is the deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She was previously the Nico Colchester fellow at the Financial Times, acting FT Poland correspondent, and journalist at OKO.press, an independent fact-checking media outlet. Her articles have appeared in Quartz, Financial Times, Politico, Gazeta Wyborcza and Tygodnik Powszechny.
