A pro-abortion protest in Warsaw, Poland, in 2020 (Omar Marques/Getty Images)
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that a Polish Constitutional Court ruling that forced a woman to go abroad for an abortion violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on private and family life.
In Poland, abortion is only permitted in cases of incest, rape or danger to the mother's life. Until 2020, it was also permitted in the case of severe fetal malformations, but in October of the same year the Constitutional Court ruled out this possibility and found it unconstitutional. The case investigated by the ECHR dates back to 2020: around 15 weeks into the pregnancy, the woman discovered that the fetus had a serious genetic anomaly. She had an abortion, but the entry into force of the Constitutional Court ruling made the procedure illegal in her case. The woman was then forced to have an abortion in another country.
According to the ECHR, the 2020 Constitutional Court ruling had a “significant psychological impact” on the woman, forcing her to have an abortion away from her family and loved ones and to bear all the costs herself. In its reasoning, the ECtHR wrote that the sentence, which was imposed when the woman had already planned an abortion, “affected her rights.”
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