Abortion in Poland: A Year of Living Dangerously

The right-wing populist party dismissed appeals from EU institutions to reconsider the law and contained the subsequent mass street protests that engulfed the country, suffering only an initial drop in opinion polls before bouncing back. Enjoying the support of around 37 per cent of voters, PiS remains far ahead of the opposition in the polls.

Recent analysis attributes this to the growing polarisation of Polish society: there might be heated debates on abortion and other issues going on in liberal and left-wing bubbles, but a third of society simply stays out of them. With PiS's near-total control over the public media and having good insights into its own electorate, the party has mastered the art of landing on its feet.

The social unrest prompted by the recent tragedy of Izabela is a case in point. Employing crisis communications, the Health Ministry issued a statement affirming the priority of the mother's life, anti-choice groups blamed the doctors, and the right-wing media appealed to the public not to politicise the family's tragedy.

Portal Onet.pl published the instructions that, according to its sources, PiS politicians had received: "It's recommended that deputies firmly state the 'tragedy was completely unrelated to the [Constitutional] Tribunal's ruling'."

But there are strong indications that it was. Risky pregnancies and foetal abnormalities often coexist, and abortion in the case of the latter could end up in criminal prosecution since the law was adopted at the beginning of this year. Doctors report living in constant fear of a life-saving abortion being challenged once the risk has been averted.

Confusion around what's legal also persists among women: self-induced pharmacological abortion is not penalised, but...