Poland already has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. In this article, we delve into the history of the long and ongoing push for reproductive rights in Poland.
Interview:
In 1956, Poland followed the Soviet Union’s lead and began to liberalise their laws in regards to abortion, starting with the decriminalisation of abortion. However, the argument behind this liberalisation was not one of the human rights, it was enacted more to prevent unsafe illegal abortions taking place which were increasing the maternal mortality rate. Abortions were also originally only available after a woman consulted with two doctors. In 1959, the Ministry of Health scrapped the need for two doctor consultations, and introduced abortion virtually on request, at the law remained firm until 1990. During these years Poland was seen by Western Europe as far more liberal than countries such as Sweden or Italy, and abortion acted as a means of birth control due to a lack of available contraceptives.
In 1990, the Ministry of Health made the first of many steps towards tightening the countries abortion laws. For women looking to obtain abortions through state-funded hospitals, they reintroduced the need for certificated from two doctors and introduced the need for an additional certificate from a psychologist. As a result, the number of induced abortions at 1 hospital dropped rapidly, from 71 in 1989 to only 19 in 1990. A code of ethics - drafted by doctors and passed in 1992 - illegalised all abortion except in the case of rape or danger to the woman’s life, where the decision to abort was given to the doctor as opposed to the woman.
Since 1992, there have been two main attempts to liberalise abortion. In 1996, pro-choice President Aleksander Kwaśniewski signed off on an amendment to the law which allowed abortions of the social ground until the 12th week of the pregnancy, however, a year later the decision was ruled constitutional and repealed. In 2003, Poland was under the leadership of the left-wing coalition SLD-UP, who had campaigned with the promise of less restrictive abortion laws. The Women’s Parliamentary Group draft such a law and submitted into the parliament in April 2004, however, the parliament rejected the discussion on the groups they had ‘more important issues’ to deal with. Like the UK, Poland’s parliament in a bicameral legislature. This means it is composed of two bodies of the legislature, the Senate (the upper body) and the Sejm (the lower body). Every 4 years a direct election takes place to decide the members of both bodies, the last election taking place in 2019. The party currently leading in the Sejm, with a majority of 235 out of 460 seats, is Prawo I Sprawiedliwość (PiS), a name which translates in English to mean ‘Law and Justice’. Although they have a majority of seats in the Sejm, PiS only holds 48 out of the 100 seats in the Senate, meaning it is controlled by opposition parties. In comparison to the seat distribution before the 2019 election, PiS lost 5 seats in the Sejm and 13 in the Senate. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, was the PiS presidential candidate in 2015 and received PiS support for his reelection campaign in 2019. In terms of their perspective on abortion, PiS is deeply set against it due to its strong alignment with the Roman Catholic Church. In 2016, they attempted to pass total ban on abortion so strict even ‘suspicious’ miscarriages could be investigated. In April 2020, PiS member and parliament speaker Elzbieta Witek submitted to ban abortion in the cases of severe to fatal fetal anomaly. Since fetal anomaly abortion cases comprise 98% of the current legal abortion cases, this would be close in practice to a total ban of abortion.
The largest of these opposite groups in Koalicja Obywatelska (KO), which translates in English to mean ‘Civic Coalition’. As can be inferred by the name, KO is a coalition of four parties as opposed to a party in its own right. The largest of these parties is Platforma Obywatelska (PO), which translates to ‘Civic Platform’ in English, however, the other parties included in the coalition are Inicjatywa Polska (iPL), .Nowoczesna (.N) and Zielona. Civic Platform’s stance on abortion is divided. Whilst in 2018 they expelled 3 MPs for voting against a bill to liberalise social abortion, they tend to present as more politically centric-right, however, this is partial as to not alienate socially conservative voters through active support for social abortion. In the 2019 election, KO won 134 of the 460 seats in the Sejm, and 43 of the 100 seats in the Senate; this was a 21 seat decrease in the Sejm and a 17 seat increase in the Senate.
The largest left-wing coalition group in Polish parliament is Lewica, which translates in English to ‘The Left’. It was created in 2019 as a combination of various smaller parties, supporting both LGBT+ and social abortion rights. Participating in their first elections in 2019, they won 49 seats in the Sejm and 2 seats in the Senate.
Looking for an insight into the way the abortion laws and political leadership in Poland shaped the citizens’ perspectives, I interviewed a 17-year girl currently living in Warsaw, Poland (this is available to listen to below). For me, the most striking takeaway from this interview was her admission that she had never studied sex education within her school system, as it highlighted the strength of the social differences between the UK and Poland in terms of their conservatism and approach to sexual health matters. With research, I discovered this legally should have been taught, sex education appeared in Polish schools in 1993 and although it was reformed in 2017 to limit these classes, they are still mandatory until the age of 18. Despite being mandatory, I can conclude from the interview that this is an easily skirted guideline. With both sex education and abortion education, not providing education within school forces all of the students’ knowledge to come from either their own research or from their peers. This increases both the spread of disinformation and of ignorance. The latter possibly helps the government maintain a ban of social abortion - it is harder for the young people of Poland to have an opinion or voice an argument when they are uneducated, and it is timely to seek out an education whilst still in school, so makes students more likely to follow the clear argument against provided by the government and the church. The benefits of ignorance is possibly the driving force between bills, such as the ‘Stop Pedophilia’ bill debated in April 2020, to ban sex education. The ‘Stop Pedophilia’ bill argued that sex education was used to sexually awaken students and familiarise themselves with homosexuality. She had also never studied abortion in school, and the idea of doing so was deeply unusual to her. This contrasts my own experience in a country where abortion is legal, and since 2000 it has been mandatory to learn about abortion in terms of legal provisions within sex education. Overall, it was clear abortion was a much more taboo topic of discussion in Poland, although the one exception she explained was that - despite its illegality - most polish teenagers valued their education above their personal opinion on abortion, and would do anything in their power to get one if it came down to it.
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