The Abortion Ban That Didn’t End Abortion in Poland

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.”

Continued: https://balkaninsight.com/2026/02/04/polands-precarious-post-abortion-ban-compromise-leaves-women-at-mercy-of-the-system/

‘A matter of life and death’: Activists fight for abortion rights in Poland

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."

Continued: https://en.vijesti.me/bbc/789015/A-matter-of-life-and-death--activists-fight-for-abortion-rights-in-Poland

The fight for safe and legal abortions in the EU remains

24 September
by Thea Jürgensen

The European Union is based on key values such as freedom and equality. These values should apply to every citizen, no matter the gender. Even though it’s 2025 and men and women should have the same rights, there is still some work to be done to make sure that everyone is free and equal.

Women across Europe are still fighting for their reproductive rights and access to legal abortions. The absence of access to safe abortions services contributes to women being forced into motherhood or losing their lives due to being denied the procedure. However, European countries have adopted different approaches in this regard.

Continued; https://www.treffpunkteuropa.de/the-fight-for-safe-and-legal-abortions-in-the-eu-remains?lang=fr

24.09.2025

UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

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

Malta – Abortion change that preserved the status quo

In stark contrast, the Diluted Amendment limits the scope of who may access the necessary treatment, since it requires that the life or health of the patient must be ‘in grave jeopardy which may lead to death’

Neil Muscat
14 October 2023

In the past months, Malta has witnessed the diluted version of Bill 28 (the ‘Diluted Amendment’) (Act XXII of 2023) signed into law by the President.

Prime Minister Robert Abela had touted the former Criminal Code amendment (the ‘Original Amendment’) as a way to protect women's lives and health, saying these principles were ‘non-negotiable'.

Continued: https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/125229/abortion_change_that_preserved_the_status_quo__neil_muscat

6 Stories Show the Human Toll of Poland’s Strict Abortion Laws

By Anna Pamula | Photographs by Kasia Strek for TIME
OCTOBER 13, 2023

Krzysztof Sowinski has cried every day since his wife Marta, who was five months pregnant, died of sepsis in 2022; he believes doctors put Marta’s life in danger by not giving them the option to terminate the pregnancy while the fetus’ heart was still beating. Janusz Kucharski also lost his partner Justyna to sepsis in the fifth month of a pregnancy. She left behind two boys.

It is likely, reproductive-rights advocates say, that these women would be alive if not for Poland's increasingly restrictive abortion laws. Abortion has been illegal in the country since 1993, but a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, which went into effect the next year, removed one of the exceptions to the law—fetal abnormalities—and imposed a near-total ban on abortion. Now women can terminate a pregnancy only if the women’s life or health is at risk (including mental health risks with a psychiatric diagnosis) or if there is reasonable suspicion that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Continued: https://time.com/6320172/poland-abortion-laws-maternal-health-care/

13.10.2023

Commentary

abortion stories

Barbara Zientek

Bartlomiej Chmielowiec

Debski Clinic

Dorota Lalik

Dr. Gizela Jagielska

Dr. Katarzyna Szamotulska

Dr. Krzysztof Preis

European Court of Human Rights

FEDERA

Foundation for Women and Family Planning

Law and Justice party

Mother and Child Institute

Poland Constitutional Tribunal

Poland’s Office for Patients' Rights

total abortion ban

U.N. Committee Against Torture

Poland / UK – Until restrictive abortion laws change, women will continue to suffer

Two recent cases in Poland and England have sparked widespread concern about abortion laws and the role of healthcare professionals in implementing them

BMJ 2023; 382 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p1517
Published 05 July 2023
Maria Lewandowska, research fellow in reproductive and sexual health

The past weeks have seen a number of tragic events surrounding abortion in Europe. In Poland, yet another pregnant woman has died of sepsis having been denied a life-saving termination; in Britain, a woman was sentenced to 28 months in prison for taking abortion pills beyond the gestational age limit.

In Poland, abortion laws were relatively liberal during Communism. When democracy was restored in the 1990s, a new, restrictive law was imposed allowing abortion in three narrowly defined cases: when pregnancy carried a risk to the life or health of the mother; when it was a result of a crime; or in the case of severe fetal anomaly.

Continued: https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj.p1517

Thousands protest in Poland against strict abortion law after pregnant woman died of sepsis

By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press

June 14, 2023

WARSAW, Poland -- Thousands of people demonstrated across Poland on Wednesday against the country's restrictive abortion law after a woman who was five months pregnant died of sepsis, the latest such death since a tightening of the law.

The protesters vented their fury against the governing Law and Justice party, or PiS, and doctors who refuse to perform abortions even when a woman's life is at risk. There have been reported cases of hospitals that refused to terminate pregnancies because of the presence of a fetal heartbeat even when the women were in grave danger.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/abortion-rights-protests-planned-poland-after-death-pregnant-100063909

Poland braces for abortion protests as doctors become center of storm

The unrest follows the death of a 33-year-old pregnant woman in May.

BY WOJCIECH KOŚĆ
JUNE 13, 2023

WARSAW — A wave of abortion rights protests is set to take place in Poland on Wednesday sparked by the death in May of a pregnant woman — an incident that has thrust doctors into the eye of the storm.

Dorota Lalik, a 33-year-old pharmacist, checked into the Pope John Paul II hospital in the southern Polish town of Nowy Targ after her waters broke on May 21. She was five months pregnant.

Continued: https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-dorota-lalik-death-braces-for-abortion-protests-as-doctors-become-centre-of-storm/

Poland to issue more detailed abortion guidelines after another pregnant woman dies

The 33-year-old from Poland, which has some of the strictest abortion rules, died of sepsis after the hospital waited for the foetus to die.

By Lauren Chadwick
12/06/2023

Polish health authorities have appointed a team to issue more detailed pregnancy termination guidelines for medical facilities after a pregnant woman died last month.

Authorities said on Monday that a 33-year-old woman, Dorota, had her rights violated after she died of sepsis in a hospital.

Continued: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/06/12/poland-to-issue-more-detailed-abortion-guidelines-after-another-pregnant-woman-dies

12.06.2023