The abortion ban in Poland has led to a lot of drastic consequences. One such situation is that doctors are every so often scared to conduct cancer treatment or remove fetuses to save a woman’s life.
With the possibility that the Supreme Court could overrule Roe v. Wade, the ruling that has made the procedure of terminating a pregnancy lawful for nearly 50 years, abortion has re-captured the public’s attention in the United States.
In the case of Roe getting overturned, legal access to abortion will be taken away from half of the American women.
Poland, a country well-known to be out of reach for abortion, even in the gravest situations provides a glimpse of the downfall of women’s health and safety.
It has long been a symbol of the abortion debate’s instability and volatility, as well as how the lives of women and their doctors are tossed around by repositioning political and social tides.
After the abolition of the last substantial exception legalizing abortion, foetal abnormalities, the ongoing debate over Poland’s 29-year-old prohibition on abortion has increased during the past 17 months.
Only one out of every ten Poles supports the stricter restriction, which was made possible by a ruling of the country’s highest court, controlled by judges allied to the country’s highly conservative government.
The rest of the population is split between reverting to lighter restrictions and legalizing abortion.
Today, the only European Union countries where abortion is effectively prohibited are Malta and Poland, both profoundly catholic.
The far-reaching consequences in Poland
More than thousands of women in Poland have to go abroad to get abortions, activists for the rights of abortion face threats of being put behind bars for giving out abortion pills and black markets are thriving in their sales of overpriced and sometimes fake abortion pills.
Legally, abortions are still permitted if there is a substantial threat to a woman’s health or life. However, critics claim that it lacks the required clarity, intimidating doctors.
In an interview, Jan Kochanowicz, a doctor and the head of the University Clinical Hospital in Bialystok, the largest city in northern Poland, said, “This law raises difficulties for doctors and patients.” “What constitutes a threat to a woman’s health and life is a difficult argument to make. Doctors are hesitant about making decisions.”
Supporters of the Polish abortion ban argue that these are extreme situations caused by doctors bad judgement instead of the law.
“The law should not have a catastrophic effect as when a woman’s health or life is in danger has not altered” said Katarzyna Gesiak, the director of Ordo Iuris’ centre for medical law bioethics, which fought for the new prohibition.
She acknowledged with opponents of the law that it was “too general” and “too open to interpretation” in its current form, but she was concerned that it still offered doctors too much discretion in performing abortions.
For advocates of abortion rights, clarity is less of a concern than what they claim has been a continuous eroding of women’s liberty since the abortion ban was overturned roughly three decades ago.
The government just recently mandated that Poland’s central health-care system keep track of pregnancies. Opponents labelled it a “pregnancy registry” that may be used to track down illegal abortions.
