POLAND: Abortion Laws Not Strong Enough For Some

By Zoltán Dujisin Reprint | | Print |

Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, May 16 2007 (IPS) - With the strictest abortion laws in Europe, one would expect any debates to revolve around its liberalisation. Yet in 21st century Poland, the abortion issue has been unsuccessfully raised by politicians seeking to strengthen anti-abortion legislation even further.

The current legislation allows for abortion in cases in which the mother’s life is in danger, the foetus is irreparably damaged or when pregnancy results from rape.

But since the country of 40 million made a sharp turn to the right, the contentious issue of abortion has returned to politics through attempts at making a constitutional issue of the protection of life from the moment of conception.

Poland is governed by the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski who was last year joined in government by two smaller, ultraconservative parties; Self-Defence and the League of Polish Families (LPR).

A proposal by Polish President Lech Kaczynski to include in the constitution provisions to protect human life since conception lost a vote in parliament last April. Parties of the centre and the left opposed the proposal for constitutional change.

The proposed alterations also included a provision offering special care to pregnant women, and making liberalisation of the present anti-abortion law impossible.

The President’s proposal was an attempt at both softening a strong motion of the far-right LPR, which wanted to make abortion totally illegal in Poland, and at maintaining the legal compromise around abortion.

“Most political parties are just supporting the current legislation, the result of a compromise reached in the early 1990s which gave us one of the strongest anti-abortion legislations in Europe,” Piotr Maciej Kaczynski, an analyst at the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw told IPS.

“The debate in Poland goes in a completely different direction than in other European countries; liberalisation is not a topic at all, it is only taken by extreme left wing and feminist groups,” the analyst said. “Here there is talk of strengthening legislation.”

Opinion polls had shown a decrease in support for the LPR at the expense of the more mainstream Law and Justice, and most observers agree that the raising of the abortion topic was an attempt by LPR leader Roman Giertych at regaining some of the conservative electorate.

By sparking the controversy, supported by the influential and hardline Catholic Radio Maryja, Giertych sought to appear in the eyes of conservatives a more devoted opponent of abortion while exploiting divisions in the coalition partner PiS.

Law and Justice feared a vote on abortion as there are internal divisions on the matter. The Party was well aware that neither the Polish population nor parliament would approve the LPR’s proposal, but also that PiS could face criticism from Radio Maryja and more conservative circles over the abortion debate.

Parliament’s rejection of stricter abortion laws caused Sejm (Polish Parliament) speaker Marek Jurek to present his resignation as speaker and as a member of the PiS. Jurek is a staunch defender of the protection of life even for cases in which the woman has been raped or her health is in danger.

Shortly after, the speaker, who had up until recently symbolised the PiS internal opposition, announced his intention to set up a new Christian conservative party which, he pledged, would continue cooperating with Law and Justice.

With one of the most strongly Catholic populations in Europe, many have pointed their fingers at the church for the recent controversy. But Piotr Kaczynski disagrees, and argues that the latest debate results from a cynical political move by the populist far right.

“The attitude of the church is not as important because, even though it is internally divided, its major figures rather advocate keeping the current legislation,” he told IPS. “The church fears that if the consensus is broken the left could come to the next government and liberalise the law.”

Yet Poland’s hardline stance on abortion was symbolised by the case of Alicja Tysiac, a woman whom Polish doctors refused an abortion in spite of high probability of childbirth impairing her eyesight.

After giving birth, Tysiac gradually lost her sight and is now legally an invalid. Following a complaint, the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights ruled in her favour, charging Poland with violating the Convention on Human Rights and Basic Freedoms and ordering it to provide compensation for the victim.

It was not the first time European bodies have been appalled by the rise in ultra- conservative politics in Poland.

A document published by the European Parliament Apr. 26 called on Poland to curb homophobic statements by public officials and to reconsider a ban on “homosexual propaganda” planned by education minister Roman Giertych for the country’s schools.

The resolution also suggested sending a special delegation to inspect the conditions of gays in Poland.

Prime Minister Kaczynski said the resolution was debatable, and insisted he was in favour of curbing gay propaganda in schools. “A rising homosexual population does not lie in any society’s interest,” he declared, adding that “nobody violates gay rights in Poland.”