‘Sculpting within the law’: Where does Poland stand on abortion?

Ada Petriczko
May 12, 2025

WARSAW - Two years after Donald Tusk became Poland's prime minister and promised to reform strict abortion rules, many of the women who supported him are disillusioned and say a May 18 presidential vote is unlikely to bring the change they were promised.

This is despite the fact that a liberal candidate could replace conservative President Andrzej Duda, who has long opposed easing some of Europe's strictest abortion laws. 

"I'm still shocked that they reached for our votes when they needed them, and then completely discarded us," said activist Anna Pięta, who helped create a viral campaign that urged women to vote in 2023.

Continued: https://www.context.news/money-power-people/polish-presidential-vote-unlikely-to-resolve-abortion-impasse


Inside a Czech Abortion Network Offering Pregnant Women from Poland a Lifeline

Apr 29, 2025
By Tamara Davison

Eva Ptasková was waiting in a dimly lit parking lot near the Czech-Polish border at 4 a.m. for someone she’d never met.

“It was empty and dark,” Ptasková recalled about the unusual mid-pandemic encounter, adding that she kept her colleague on the phone for safety.

Eventually, a figure exited a taxi and clambered into Ptasková’s car — a woman from Poland, who had traveled to the neighboring Czech Republic for an abortion. With just hours to spare before the appointment, Ptašková listened to the woman recount her life story as they drove through the night. It was the first time the Polish woman, who was already a mother to a young baby, had left her homeland.

Continued: https://www.moretoherstory.com/stories/inside-a-czech-abortion-network-offering-pregnant-women-from-poland-a-lifeline


Across from parliament, Poland’s first abortion centre opens

Bernard OSSER
Mar 7, 2025

As Poland's first abortion centre opened on Friday the choice of location was nothing short of symbolic: just opposite the parliament that failed to follow through on its pledges to relax the country's stringent abortion laws.

Poland has a near-total ban on abortion but in an act of defiance, the activists decided to put pressure on lawmakers by launching a space near the chamber where women considering terminating their pregnancy can get help to do so.

"This is a historic moment in the 32-year history of democratic Poland, because no one had ever managed to do it before," the centre's coordinator Anna Pieta said, her voice shaking. 

Continued: https://www.wfxg.com/news/across-from-parliament-polands-first-abortion-centre-opens/article_8ee7ea64-3b52-53a7-a4ec-ae6aa0f7e749.html


Polish court orders retrial in hot-button abortion case

Warsaw (AFP) – A Polish court on Thursday ordered a retrial in the case of an activist found guilty of aiding a woman to terminate her pregnancy, in a symbolic step for Poland's abortion rights movement.

Feb 13, 2025

Justyna Wydrzynska was sentenced to community service in 2023 in the first such case concerning an activist in the EU country, which has a near-total abortion ban and outlaws abortion assistance.

…But an appeals court on Thursday overturned "the contested judgment in its entirety", judge Rafal Kaniok said, citing doubts over the independence of the presiding judge who delivered the sentence.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250213-polish-court-orders-retrial-in-hot-button-abortion-case


Given Trump’s win, should Europeans help Americans travel for abortions?

I started the first abortion fund in Europe 15 years ago. Here’s how to support our American and European sisters

Mara Clarke
6 January 2025

Every time there’s news about abortion in the US, my notifications start pinging. In 2017 – “Will you start sending money to people in Texas who need abortions?” In 2019 – “Will you start helping people from Alabama travel for abortions?” When both the leak and the actual overturn of Roe v Wade happened, and when Donald Trump was elected – “Should we set up pathways for people from the US to travel to Europe for abortions?”

The people asking mean well. Like me, they want a world where anyone who needs an abortion can have one, preferably without having to cross state or international lines. Unlike me, most of these people haven’t spent over 20 years helping people failed by states, laws and healthcare systems have abortions.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/trump-us-abortion-ban-pregnant-travel-borders-europe/


Abortion activists deliver invoice to Polish government: you owe us €11.5m

Saturday, April 13, 2024
Women Help Women

Abortion Without Borders has spent more than €11.5m (PLN 49,104,011) in time and money to provide abortion access for Polish residents, without help from the government.

Activists from Abortion Without Borders brought the ‘Polish abortion debt’ to the Sejm (Polish parliament) on Thursday (11 April), presenting an invoice to the government for the costs of time and financial assistance to provide abortion access for Polish residents.

Continued: https://womenhelp.org/en/page/1584/abortion-activists-deliver-invoice-to-polish-government-you-owe-us


Polish women ‘betrayed’ by slow pace of abortion reforms

Warsaw (AFP) – An unprecedented mobilisation among women brought a liberal alliance to power in Poland, raising hopes that one of Europe's strictest abortion laws would be scrapped. But now they feel betrayed.

March 8, 2024

A record 74 percent of eligible women voted in the October elections and the mobilisation of young female voters helped pro-Western parties oust the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.

Now however, many are voicing anger and frustration, saying the government is dragging its feet on changing the laws on women's reproductive rights.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240308-polish-women-betrayed-by-slow-pace-of-abortion-reforms-1


Second trimester abortions: a preventable crisis in global abortion care

Diminishing access to second trimester abortions in many countries denies the reality of the rising number of vulnerable women most likely to need a later stage abortion. Sally Howard reports on a preventable crisis in global abortion care

BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p2982
Published 31 January 2024
Sally Howard, freelance journalist

Kamila had dearly wanted to have a child. The 27 year old was happily engaged to be married and was 17 weeks pregnant when a scan showed that her fetus was developing without a skull and wouldn’t survive to birth. She was refused an abortion in her home country of Poland, where abortions in the case of fetal abnormality are prohibited.

On her way to the Netherlands, where an abortion had been arranged by the charity Abortion Without Borders, Kamila (not her real name) started bleeding heavily in a petrol station toilet. Distraught and weak, she had to be transported to a German hospital, where she gave birth to a dead fetus in the emergency room. Kamila returned to Poland after a four day hospital stay, with a bill for her medical treatment from the German state.

Poland has some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws (fig 1). The law that forced Kamila to travel had been in place since 2020, introduced to Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (the national court that supervises compliance of statutory law with the country’s constitution) by the Polish Law and Justice Party, which was voted out of power on 19 October 2023. In those three years the ruling has effectively shuttered Polish abortion provision: both medical and surgical abortions are inaccessible in Poland, even in cases where they’re technically legally permitted, such as when there’s a threat to the life or health of the parent.

Continued (Behind paywall): https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj.p2982.full


Global: People defending abortion rights are being ‘stigmatised, abused, discriminated against, even killed’ – major new report

24 November 2023
Amnesty International

People who are defending the right to have an abortion and those who provide them, and related essential services are being stigmatised, intimidated, attacked and subjected to unjust prosecutions, making this work increasingly difficult and dangerous to carry out, said Amnesty International in a major new report today (24 November).

In the 59-page report, An Unstoppable Movement: A global call to recognise and protect those who defend the right to abortion, reveals how many healthcare workers, activists and advocates around the world face abuse, arrest, prosecution and imprisonment for supporting the right of women, girls and people who can become pregnant to access abortions.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/global-people-defending-abortion-rights-are-being-stigmatised-abused-discriminated


In the three years since Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruling, Abortion Without Borders has helped more than 125,000 people in Poland to access safe abortion

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

In the three years since Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruling, Abortion Without Borders has helped more than 125,000 people in Poland to access safe abortion with more than PLN 3,675,000 (€823,290) in funding.

During the last year (from 22.10.2022 to 22.10.2023), Abortion Without Borders groups helped 46,773 thousand people from Poland to access abortion with more than PLN 1,675,031 (€375,250). More than 1,235 of these people traveled abroad to access a second or third trimester abortion.

Continued: https://womenhelp.org/en/page/1577/new-data-from-abortion-without-borders-in-the-three-years-since