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Poland is heading for a further tightening of its already strict abortion law. The Warsaw Constitutional Court declared an exemption from the previously applicable abortion ban unconstitutional. According to this, the termination of pregnancy was previously allowed if the fetus had serious malformations. According to the judges, this violates the right to life guaranteed in the Polish constitution.
This means that abortions are only allowed after rape and incest, or when the life and health of the mother are in grave danger.
More than a hundred MPs, mostly from the ranks of the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), had addressed the highest Polish court with their criticisms of the current legal situation. In 2019, only about 1,100 abortions were performed in the hospitals of the strongly Catholic country, in almost all cases because of the paragraph that has now been declared illegal.
The ruling that has now been passed gives the green light to the majority of the government in the Warsaw Parliament to pass a bill to criminalize the abortion of malformed fetuses. The law will only come into force after it has been confirmed by President Andrzej Duda. The conservative head of state has already declared his support for the project.
Tusk says the decision is “beyond cynical”
The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatovic, harshly criticized the sentence. The decision was practically “equivalent to a ban” on abortions and represented a violation of human rights, he said on the online service Twitter. He warned that the ruling would result in women being able to afford abortions in secret or abroad. For everyone else, judgment means “even greater suffering.”
Former Polish Prime Minister and former President of the EU Council, Donald Tusk, also condemned the court decision. “Putting the issue of abortion and a pseudo-court decision on the agenda amid the rampant pandemic is more than cynical,” the liberal-conservative politician tweeted.
