Reacting to news that Polish lawmakers approved four amendments to Poland’s abortion laws in a first reading in parliament today, Amnesty International’s Miko Czerwiński, Head of Campaigns, Amnesty International Poland said:
“By approving these four amendments, Poland’s parliament has taken a significant step towards ending Poland’s cruel and draconian restrictions on access to abortion, which have had a devastating impact on the lives and health of so many people.
“Poland needs to urgently amend their abortion law which endangers lives, jeopardises health and contravenes the country’s international and European human rights obligations as well as flies in the face of in the face of the World Health Organization’s abortion care guideline.
“As these amendments go through to the next voting stage, it is crucial that politicians listen to the voices of civil society and those people directly affected by the near total ban on abortion and bring the law into compliance with international human rights standards.
“Decriminalizing abortion is essential to ensuring all people who need abortion services, as well as abortion providers, activists and advocates, are not threatened with criminal consequences for accessing, assisting someone to access, or delivering abortion services.”
Background
On 27 January 2021, a ruling by Poland’s discredited Constitutional Tribunal banned nearly all access to abortion by removing grounds of “severe and irreversible fetal defect or incurable illness that threatens the fetus’ life”. The ruling eliminated one of the only remaining legal grounds for abortion under Poland’s highly restrictive law and its entry into force means that there is now effectively a near-total ban on abortion in Poland. Previously, over 90 percent of the approximately 1,000 legal abortions annually performed in Poland were on this ground.
Under the current law, healthcare providers in Poland can only provide abortions if a pregnant woman’s health or life is at risk or if the pregnancy results from a crime. However, providers often would refuse performing even lawful abortions due to the “chilling effect” of the law.