In Poland, the already very restrictive abortion law is being further restricted. Abortion was previously possible in Poland in three cases: as a result of rape, if the pregnant woman’s life is directly threatened and in the case of severe malformations or incurable illness of the fetus. The third indication was declared incompatible with the “right to life” and therefore unconstitutional by the country’s Supreme Court at the end of last week. This effectively bans abortions – as almost all legal abortions in Poland last year were carried out for this third indication. Women can now be forced to carry and give birth to non-viable or even dead fetuses.
“The Polish government is disenfranchising and disempowering women in an existentially important area of life and then leaving them alone with the often difficult or impossible to cope with health, psychosocial and financial problems that arise from being forced to carry pregnancies to term,” says Hedwig Toth-Schmitz, board member of the HVD Bundesverband. “The European bodies must no longer stand by and watch as a state in the middle of Europe violates its citizens’ rights to freedom and self-determination and increasingly adopts an authoritarian rather than a democratic approach.”
It was only in April of this year that the country’s right-wing conservative government made an attempt to massively restrict the right to abortion. However, due to mass protests, parliament ultimately did not vote on the proposed amendment. The PiS party has now assigned the decision to the Supreme Court, which is suspected of bias: After coming to power in 2015, the court was restructured by the PiS; with one exception, all constitutional judges were appointed by the PiS majority in parliament. The European Union has therefore already initiated four infringement proceedings due to a violation of the rule of law.
“The PiS party is putting itself on a par with Putin or Erdogan,” explains Erwin Kress, spokesman for the board of the HVD Bundesverband. “It is the style of an authoritarian regime when democratic opinion-forming is prevented and the rights of minorities are overridden by cheap tricks. The Humanist Association of Germany strongly condemns such actions and stands on the side of the truly democratic forces in our neighboring country.”
Church justifies coercion to give birth and live
The de facto total ban on abortion is supported above all by the Catholic Church, which openly supports the PiS party. “The Church has no regard for the demands of the majority of women, but uses its influence on the Polish government to push through anti-human policies in accordance with supposedly divine norms,” says Kress.
The Catholic Church in Poland virtually celebrated the ruling. Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, Chairman of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, called it an “epochal change in the law”, as it was “outrageously barbaric” to deny someone the right to life, “especially because of their illness”. However, this one-sided view not only completely ignores the situation of unintentionally pregnant women, but also conceals the fact “that unborn children with the most severe disabilities are to be forced to live and thus to suffer”, criticizes Kress. In contrast to the arch-conservative Polish church, he sees “the barbarism precisely in the forced life of severely disabled fetuses”.
In recent years, the restrictions on women’s and minority rights have been accompanied by massive resistance from civil society. As demonstrations are currently restricted due to the pandemic situation, observers assume that this circumstance is being exploited – it is hoped that mass demonstrations will not take place. Nevertheless, hundreds of people took part in protests in Warsaw and elsewhere in Poland at the weekend. State television did not report on the demonstrations.
