Far-right Polish MEP threatens doctor with ‘citizen’s arrest’ over late-term abortion

Grzegorz Braun’s actions have been condemned by both the Polish justice minister and the country’s equality minister.

April 18, 2025
By Claudia Chiappa

Far-right European Parliament lawmaker and long-shot Polish presidential candidate Grzegorz Braun is facing a potential investigation after he stormed a hospital on Wednesday and threatened a doctor with a citizen's arrest for performing a legal late-term abortion.

Gizela Jagielska said she was signing some administrative documents when a crowd of about 30 men, led by Braun, burst into the hospital around 11 a.m. She said the men surrounded her, stopped her from leaving and told her she should be arrested.

Continued : https://www.politico.eu/article/right-wing-poland-mep-grzegorz-braun-threaten-doctor-citizen-arrest-late-term-abortion-gizela-jagielska/

Polish government publishes guidelines to help women obtain legal abortions

Aug 31, 2024
Notes from Poland

Poland’s government has published guidelines for when and how abortions can be carried out, with the aim of ensuring that doctors and prosecutors “take the women’s side” when making decisions on the issue.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk – who last week admitted that it is unlikely he can achieve his aim of liberalising the country’s strict abortion law – declared today that “if we won’t change the law, we will change the reality”.

“We are looking for ways of acting that, in accordance with the law, will enable in practice access to legal abortion for women who, for various reasons, should have the right to this abortion,” he added.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/08/31/polish-government-publishes-guidelines-to-help-women-obtain-legal-abortions/

31.08.2024

Polish activists say new abortion guidelines not good enough

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has resorted to stopgap measures to placate women's rights activists after he was unable to fulfill his promise to liberalize the country's restrictive abortion law.

Monika Margraf in Warsaw
Aug 17, 2024

"I remember when only 50 people came to my protests in defense of women's rights in 2016," said Anna Sikora. "After four years, almost 2,000 people took part in the protests. Most of them also took part in the last parliamentary elections as I called on them to do."

Sikora, a mother of two from the central city of Sieradz, is a left-wing activist and local leader of women's protests that have swept Poland and mobilized women against the Catholic-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), which led the country from 2016 to 2023. Their hopes for changes to the abortion law made the party's electoral defeat possible in fall of 2023.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/polish-activists-say-new-abortion-guidelines-not-good-enough/a-69964722

Poland’s Abortion Reform Stalls as Coalition Politics Clash with Campaign Promises

Aug 12, 2024
Zuzanna Stawiska, Health Policy Watch

Nearly a year after new Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised a fresh start for abortion rights, following his election victory in October 2023, reform efforts have stalled as campaign promises collide with the realities of coalition politics in a divided Poland.

Poland is amongst only four countries worldwide to have restricted abortion rights in the past three decades, joining El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the United States. In 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, stacked with judges appointed by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, further tightened the country’s already strict 1993 abortion law.

Continued: https://healthpolicy-watch.news/polands-abortion-reform-stalls-as-coalition-politics-clash-with-campaign-promises/

In Poland, I Saw What a Second Trump Term Could Do to America

by Michelle Goldberg
Photographs by Rafal Milach
Feb. 6, 2024

Adam Bodnar, Poland’s new justice minister, recently explained to me the immense challenge of rebuilding liberal democracy in his country after an eight-year slide toward authoritarianism. Imagine, he said, that Donald Trump had won the last election and been in power for two terms instead of one. “What would be the damage?” he asked.

After only four years of Trump, President Biden inherited a furiously divided nation, its courts seeded with right-wing apparatchiks and the nature of reality itself in deep dispute. But as even MAGA die-hards will acknowledge, Trump often failed to bend the state to his will, which is why his allies have a plan to do things differently next time, purging civil servants and replacing them with loyalists. Poland is a country that has just gone through something like what Trumpists hope to impose on us in a second term. Its institutions have been hollowed out. Many experienced technocrats and neutral judges have been replaced by lackeys and ideologues.

Continue: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/opinion/abortion-ban-poland-democracy.html

Will Polish police repeat crackdown on anti-abortion protests two years on?

OPINION: The EU should insist that Poland uphold the right to sexual and reproductive health care|

Letta Tayler
21 October 2022

It’s two years since hundreds of thousands of people – mostly women – joined protests in Poland against a near-total ban on legal abortion. Police used violence to disperse rallies and detained thousands of protesters.

On Monday, protesters in Warsaw, at the Constitutional Tribunal, plan to mark the second anniversary of the tribunal’s ruling with another rally, outside the Constitutional Tribunal, which approved the near-total ban. They say they will repeat their demands on the government to decriminalise terminations and to ensure access to safe and legal abortion for all.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/poland-abortion-law-ban-protests-second-anniversary-police/

Near-total abortion ban takes effect in Poland amid protests

Protesters demanding full liberalization of abortion law, resignation of government

The Associated Press
Posted: Jan 28, 2021

A near-total ban on abortion has taken effect in Poland and triggered a new round of countrywide protests three months after a top court ruled that the abortion of congenitally damaged fetuses is unconstitutional.

Led by a women's rights group, Women's Strike, people poured onto the streets of Warsaw and other cities late Wednesday. More anti-government demonstrations are planned for Thursday evening.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/poland-abortion-europe-reaction-1.5891207

Polish women travel abroad for abortions ahead of law change

Support services in Poland and abroad say numbers increasing even before legislation is tightened

Shaun Walker and Anna Koslerova in Prague
Sun 13 Dec 2020

Polish women are increasingly being forced to travel abroad to seek abortions even though a court ruling to tighten the country’s already strict laws has not yet coming into force, activists have said.

The constitutional court ruled in October
that abortion was illegal even in cases where there were severe foetal
abnormalities. Around 1,000 abortions a year – almost all of the country’s
legal abortion procedures – are carried out for this reason.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/13/polish-women-travel-abroad-for-abortions-ahead-of-new-law

Poland’s government creates constitutional crisis it will find hard to resolve

Malgorzata Tomczak, Warsaw
November 30, 2020

In the past, the problems of the country’s constitutional court were seen as complex and detached from people’s daily lives. Until now that is, when they started to impact on the most private and sensitive areas of Polish women’s lives.

With its recent legal attempt to put further limits on abortion, the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has created a constitutional crisis that will be hard to resolve. And its reckless actions are already impacting on Polish women’s lives.

Continued: https://balkaninsight.com/2020/11/30/polands-government-creates-constitutional-crisis-it-will-find-hard-to-resolve/