Stanisław Kaleta
29.05.2026
A prominent far-right activist has been sentenced to 10 months of unpaid community service for manhandling a protester during mass demonstrations triggered by a tightening of Poland’s abortion laws.
A Warsaw court ruled on Friday that Robert Bąkiewicz must carry out 30 hours of supervised community work per month and pay 5,000 zloty (around €1,200) in compensation to women’s rights activist Angelika Domańska.
23 March 2026
by Wiktoria Wilk
If you want to know how Polish democracy is doing in 2026, do not look at another index: look at a woman’s phone. Between lecture schedules and grocery lists sit the real indicators: a Czech clinic’s address; a fund for abortion pills; the name of the only police officer in town who is said to believe women. That is where “rule of law” is fact-checked in real time. For a decade, the official story of Polish democracy has been transition, accession, and backsliding, while women have been pushed into the “culture war” drawer.
But seen from the ground, the order is reversed. The near‑total abortion ban, the threatened exit from the Istanbul Convention, the crusades against “gender ideology”, and rainbow‑free zones. These are not side conflicts, they are the main experiment in how far governments can capture courts, conventions and institutions before someone utters the word “authoritarianism”. The state of Polish democracy is perceived clearest in the places where the law legislates against the lives of women.
Continued: https://www.taurillon.org/poland-s-democracy-looks-different-from-a-hospital-corridor
March 12, 2026
Center for Reproductive Rights
GENEVA—This week, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a decision urging Poland to ensure effective access to lawful abortion without further delay. The Committee expressed continued concern that Poland has yet to fully comply with the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments in the cases of Tysiąc v. Poland, R.R. v. Poland, P. and S. v. Poland, and M.L. v. Poland, which require the authorities to ensure that access to lawful abortion is accessible in practice.
More than 18 years after the first of these landmark judgments became final, systemic barriers remain. Poland’s highly restrictive abortion law and the criminalisation of abortion continue to have a chilling effect on the provision of lawful abortion care. Combined with regulatory gaps, ineffective complaint procedures, frequent refusals of care based on the “conscience clause,” and the stigma surrounding abortion, these barriers leave many women who are legally entitled to abortion unable to access these services in practice. The situation deteriorated further following the regressive Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling in 2020, which effectively imposed a near-total ban on abortion.
Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/news/coe-committee-of-ministers-poland-access-abortion-care/
By Reuters
March 12, 2026
WARSAW, March 12 (Reuters) - The number of legal abortions in Poland doubled in 2024, while complaints to Polish authorities over conscience clause refusals in the country have ceased, the Council of Europe said on Thursday.
Poland, a predominantly Catholic country, introduced a near-total abortion ban in 2021 under the previous nationalist government after pregnancy termination due to foetal abnormalities was ruled unconstitutional.
Amnesty International
By Cécile Yougbare, SRHR activist with Médecins du Monde, Kinga Jelińska, activist from Poland and Erin Grant, Abortion Care Network Co-Executive Director
10 March 2026
Across the world, governments and other actors are rolling back on decades of progress on gender equality, including access to abortion. But people are fighting back, determined to protect the rights so many have fought so hard to achieve.
As the Commission on the Status of Women holds its 70th session, three courageous human rights defenders from Burkina Faso, Poland and the United States share their strategies to protect access to abortion, their hopes for the future and the reasons why they believe that, despite the many increasing challenges, humanity must always win.
March 3, 2026
Warsaw (AFP) – A Polish court on Tuesday sentenced three doctors to prison sentences over the 2021 death of a pregnant woman, which sparked nationwide protests and renewed scrutiny of the country's restrictive abortion laws.
The woman, Izabela, whose last name has not been made public, died of sepsis in 2021 while experiencing complications in the 22nd week of pregnancy. Her death came a year after a law toughening abortion restrictions in the mainly Catholic country came into effect and reignited mass protests.
Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260303-polish-doctors-jailed-for-denying-woman-abortion
12.02.2026
ASTRA Network
Poland is experiencing a coordinated and escalating campaign of anti-abortion intimidation and disinformation that directly undermines women’s access to lawful healthcare. This campaign is driven by fundamentalist actors and increasingly reinforced by political figures and state institutions that legitimize and amplify these practices. Together, these dynamics create a climate in which legally guaranteed medical services are systematically obstructed through fear, harassment, and institutional pressure.
Abortion Access in Poland: Law and Reality
Poland has one of the most restrictive abortion legislations in Europe. Following politically captured rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal, abortion is now effectively permitted only when a pregnancy poses a threat to a woman’s life or health, or when it results from a criminal act.
Five years after Poland's top court gutted abortion rights, access to legal procedures has quietly expanded – but only for women who learned to work within a system designed to say ‘no’.
Ada Petriczko
February 4, 2026
Edyta was 29 weeks pregnant when the MRI results came back. She opened the report in a hospital corridor in Warsaw. Missing temporal bone. Disrupted neuronal migration. Abnormalities in the corpus callosum.
“I just stood there. I couldn’t move,” she tells BIRN. “The entire pregnancy everyone kept saying nothing was wrong – and then suddenly my baby's brain wasn’t developing normally.”
During decades of communist rule, Poland had one of the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. But in 1993, four years after the fall of communism, abortion was largely banned because the Catholic Church strongly advocated a complete ban on termination of pregnancy.
25.12.2025
Their baby's heartbeat gave Dorota Lalik and her husband Marcin hope that everything could be fine after all. Dorota, a 33-year-old pharmacist, was rushed to the hospital one Sunday morning when her water broke at 20 weeks pregnant.
in such circumstances, pregnancies are very risky and often unsustainable. Without amniotic fluid, the fetus is at high risk of infections, which can cause sepsis, which can be fatal for the pregnant woman.
But Marcin says that he and Dorota, who was given antibiotics by doctors and advised to rest and keep her legs elevated, were repeatedly assured by hospital staff "that everything looked good and that no one was in danger."
by Evi Kiorri, Brussels
December 22, 2025
Podcast – 20:30 minutes
Abortion remains illegal in Malta and highly restricted in Poland, despite ongoing pressure from European institutions to uphold reproductive rights.
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, we examine the historical and current influence of religious institutions on abortion policy across Europe, and the political forces maintaining these restrictions.
We are joined by Neil Datta, executive director and founder of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, and Magdalena Chrzczonowicz, editor-in-chief of OKO.press and contributor to the cross-border investigation Exporting Abortion, who share insights on how restrictive laws impact women and how cross-border initiatives are working to protect access to safe abortion care.
Continued; https://euobserver.com/health-and-society/ar23b6aa4a
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