Donald Tusk's Poland is trying to get back on the social front after the setbacks of eight years of conservative rule by passing a law providing comprehensive abortion rights and easing restrictions on the morning-after pill.
“We are ready to present in the next few hours” this text that allows “legal and safe abortions up to the 12th week of pregnancy,” said the Prime Minister, after also announcing a bill that would allow access to the “morning-after pill.” possible “from the age of 15. However, things are looking up for the pro-European coalition that came to power in the October elections, which promised, among other things, the liberalization of abortion legislation and has already reintroduced public funding for in-vitro fertilization.
In fact, two of the three factions of the coalition – the Left and the Citizens' Coalition led by Tusk – have in their programs an almost complete relaxation of the requirements for abortion, the third member of the coalition, the Christian Democrats of Third Way, rejects the idea of a comprehensive liberalization of the Right on abortion in a country with a strong Catholic tradition, where the rules governing it are among the most restrictive in Europe. This group, consisting of the Polonia 2050 party of Parliament Speaker Szymon Holownia and the Peasants' Party PSL, proposes “a return to the old law” of 1993, which provided for a very limited right to abortion, although not as “current”. The fight in parliament over the new law is likely to be tough and will also be blocked by the veto power of the clerical-conservative President Andrzej Duda.
Currently, abortion is only permitted in cases of rape, incest and if there is a risk to the health or life of the mother. In 2020, the Constitutional Court also sided with the populist state government by declaring abortions for fetal abnormalities “unconstitutional,” even if they were serious or incurable, sparking the outraged reaction of thousands of women across the country walked the street. In December, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) condemned Warsaw for “violation of the right to respect for private life” after a young woman was denied access to an abortion on the grounds of “the presence of fetal anomalies”.
The vote in Parliament is not yet scheduled, but women's rights groups have urged lawmakers to act quickly as there are tens of thousands of people who terminate their pregnancies at home using banned abortion pills, risking their lives, or go abroad .
Read the full article on ANSA.it