Poland Is in Revolt Against Its New Abortion Ban
Last Thursday, Poland's Constitutional Court banned almost all abortion, as part of a wider Catholic-conservative offensive against women's rights. But the ruling has already sparked strikes and blockades across Poland — and the working-class women least able to afford a clandestine abortion are leading the revolt.
The fourth day of protests in Krakow, Poland against the Constitutional Court ruling on tightening the abortion law. (Omar Marques / Getty Images)
The ban on abortion, introduced in 1993 by the Polish Parliament, and fixed as the law by the Constitutional Court in 1997, was one of the milestones of Poland’s transition from state communism to neoliberal capitalism.
The law established in 1997 allowed abortion in three situations: when the pregnancy resulted from rape, when the life or health of the woman was in grave danger, or when the fetus risked severe illness or death. Last Thursday, a ruling of the Constitutional Court has made it illegal to terminate pregnancy also in this third situation.
Given that the majority of the legal abortions conducted in Poland were performed because of this third reason, the ruling means that there will be almost no abortions in Poland — officially, that is. Unofficially, according to one of the country’s main feminist organizations, the Federation for Women and Family Planning, some hundred thousand abortions are made in Poland annually.
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