‘Not One More’: Reflecting on Poland’s 2020 Abortion Ban Three Years On

By Natália Kollárová

Where does modern society draw the line when it comes to telling people what to do with their bodies? For those who are able to have children in Poland, the right to choose has been taken away by a law – one that not even hundreds of protests all over the world could stop. How is this still happening in the 21st century?

The abortion ban became reality for Polish people in 2020. Truthfully, the current situation has arisen in the former communist country through manipulation and the interpretation of religion. The ban has been met with great opposition ever since being introduced. You’ve probably heard of Strajk Kobjet or maybe even shared the red bolt on your Instagram story in solidarity.

Poland always struggled for its independence. The country fell under the regime of the Soviet Union at the end of WW2. Surprisingly enough, during this era, the government offered safe and legal access to abortion. The first talks of taking this fundamental right away surfaced in the first years of democratic Poland. After the fall of communism and forty years of liberal access to the procedure, the country decided to introduce the strictest abortion legislation in Europe.

Even the past abortion law, however more lenient, could easily be interpreted as propaganda of the communist party to outdistance feminism and alleviate any possible attempts at creating a feminist movement.

The Polish Catholic Church, as a base for condemning abortion as one of the greatest sins, had been protesting liberal abortion laws ever since the 1950s. Restricting access never actually led to fewer abortions, it only forced those who needed them to go under the knife of the underqualified in extremely unsafe conditions.

A series of attempts to change the law and make it stricter started in 1988. These challenges proposed the criminalisation of people who have undergone illegal abortions. The first two years of Poland’s democracy brought eleven restrictive amendments, two of which made it to Parliament.

The anti-communist movement slowly turned into a campaign fuelled by religion. Politics has always been interlaced with religion and the Polish to this day put a lot of importance on what the Church says is right – or rather what it interprets as good in the eyes of God. The Church even advertised one of their proposed abortion bans in 1991 as a gift for the ‘Sainted Father’.

In the ‘90s, Polish doctors created a special Code of medical ethics, which only allowed abortions on medical and criminal grounds. Later on, Conditions of Permissibility of Abortion were passed by the Parliament. It banned abortion on any social grounds. People living in difficult conditions could no longer access it. The procedure also became unobtainable in cases of rape. At that point, only 200 legal abortions were performed annually. The total number of abortions was, however, much higher.

Poland was divided into two groups of doctors: the ones who denied abortions even to those with a legal entitlement to it, and the ones who performed the procedure underground. Many of those enabling abortions, however, mainly did it for their own financial benefit.

Anti-abortion law was liberalised in 1996 and restricted again a year later. In 2021, a left-wing party made it to Parliament. At first the party presented safe access to abortion as one of the main points in their agenda. Soon after their victory it was pushed back, and the party claimed they made no such promise. The parliament said there were more important issues to focus on and the debate on reproductive rights has been swept up under the carpet.

Poland’s government was reluctant to discuss the issue of illegal abortion, but there were those fighting for the law to change. The Women’s Parliamentary Group drafted a bill on responsible parenthood, but parliament never discussed the proposal.

The first bill requesting the ban on abortion altogether was proposed after a pro-life non-government organisation collected over half a million signatures supporting it in 2011. The majority of MPs rejected it, but the bill got a lot of support from the right-wing Parties.

In 2016 people went to the streets, dissatisfied with the government recklessly toying with reproductive rights. More than 100,000 joined the Black Protest, which was followed by the Black Monday protest, where thousands of Polish women and gender minorities refused to go to work, school or participate in domestic chores as a sign of disagreement.

Polish society in general bases a lot of its values on family and religion, and often considers the meaning of life for female-presenting people to bear children and become a housewife. It is not so unimaginable; Poland has always been one of Europe’s most strongly Catholic countries. Nowadays more and more people are opposed to the current legislation and therefore suppress the reach of the Church that still pushes for even stricter legislation.

In October 2020, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal regarded abortion unconstitutional. The government placed more importance on the life of the foetus rather that the pregnant person. It claimed that abortion discriminates against the ‘unborn child’ and violates Article 38 of the Polish Constitution (the right to life of every human being). After the ruling took effect in January 2021, abortion only became permissible in cases of rape (which are already extremely difficult to prove in front of a jury), incest or a threat to the pregnant person’s life (which has later proven to be quite irrelevant).

The whole of Poland was overrun by protesters. Women and people went to the streets, followed by protests in other countries in Europe. The resistance got even stronger after the death of a 37-year-old woman, who died after doctors refused to remove a dead foetus from her body because the other twin was still alive.

‘Not one more’ became a slogan screamed by the attendees.

The 2020 protests might have been the biggest Poland has ever experienced but that doesn't mean the fight for reproductive rights is over. Poland has a long road ahead of it and the protest might be just what sets the direction of the country straight.

To this day, the small feminist representation in Poland hasn’t been able to make a break in parliament and affect the conservative abortion policies, which in return drive young people abroad. One thing is for sure: we cannot give up the fight for reproductive freedom.