Polish government seeks to help women get legal abortions without breaking the law

Tusk’s administration failed to change the law, but it now promises to “change reality”

One of the big pre-election promises of Donald Tusk was to amend the strict Polish law on abortions passed by the Conservative government before him. Now that it’s been shown that the task of pro-choice liberalization would be much more daunting than expected, due to insufficient support in the Sejm, the government has turned to finding ways to help women by finding loopholes in the law.

“We are looking for ways of acting that, in accordance with the law, will enable in practice access to legal abortion for women who, for various reasons, should have the right to this abortion,” declared PM Tusk, as quoted by Notes from Poland. He also said that if his government couldn’t change the law, at least they could “change reality”.

The work on this has fallen on the country’s health ministry, which for months now has been working on crafting guidelines that could help women get an abortion without getting them in trouble with law enforcement.

Actually, the guidelines are aimed not at the women but at the Polish hospitals and doctors. These now grant more powers to specialist doctors. Now, even cardiologists or psychiatrists can recommend the procedure, which is the basis for getting a legal abortion. Under the current law, abortion is only allowed if a specialist determines that the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life or if the pregnancy was the result of sexual abuse.

Poland and Malta have the strictest abortion laws in the EU

According to the Polish Minister of Health, Izabela Leszczyna, the guidelines clearly state that the law does not indicate that the threat to life or health must be sudden or direct. Previously, health practitioners used to seek a second medical opinion before performing an abortion in order to avoid falling under the penalty of law. That, however, could often result in delays that made abortion impossible.

The new guidelines now make the seeking of a second opinion on the part of the health practitioners punishable with fines.

Poland and Malta are the EU countries with the strictest laws concerning abortion. After Poland’s current near-total abortion ban was introduced in 2021, the number of legal terminations fell dramatically. Only 107 were carried out that year compared to over 1,000 in 2020.