March 12, 2026
Ammar Ebrahim, Jersey political reporter
Jersey politicians have passed a new termination of pregnancy law that allows abortions before 22 weeks.
The current law does not allow abortions beyond 12 weeks unless there is a severe foetal anomaly.
Assistant Health Minister Andy Howell, who brought the law to the assembly, said: "I think it just gives women longer to think about the decision they have got to make.
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.”
Campaigners say ‘extremely vulnerable women’ are having to travel hundreds of miles to visit English clinics
Libby Brooks, Scotland correspondent
Mon 21 Apr 2025
Campaigners have warned Scottish ministers that they are failing in their legal and moral duties as growing numbers of “extremely vulnerable women” have to travel hundreds of miles south because they cannot access later-term abortions in Scotland.
Not one of Scotland’s 14 regional health boards provide abortion care after 20 weeks except in the specific cases of foetal abnormality or threat to a woman’s life. This is despite the Scottish government promising to rectify this “explicit inequality” three years ago, and abortion being legal on broad grounds until 24 weeks across the UK.
Justyna Wydrzyńska is the first activist charged under Poland’s incredibly strict abortion laws. She tells VICE World News it won't stop her helping people who need abortions.
By Ruby Lott-Lavigna
June 16, 2022
WARSAW, Poland – The woman said she needed an abortion. She said she had already tried to leave Poland to get one, but her abusive husband had stopped her, threatening to go to the police. Across the world, a new virus was closing borders, restricting travel and trapping people inside their homes, and Justyna Wydrzyńska, sensing a chilling desperation, decided to send the woman a packet of abortion pills that she’d been keeping for her own personal use.
A year passed. Then out of nowhere, police arrived at Wydrzyńska’s door to search her home – some officers finding more than they anticipated.
Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akezek/poland-abortion-justyna-wydrzynska
Published on April 22, 2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Exactly six months ago – on the 22nd October 2020 – the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland ruled that the performing abortion due to foetal defects in Polish hospitals is unconstitutional. Even though the decision came into force only at the end of January 2021, in practice the change worked immediately. Already on the 23rd October 2020 the first four people who had been refused abortion in Polish hospitals called Abortion Without Borders.
In the last 6 months the groups that make up Abortion Without Borders have helped thousands of people from Poland to access abortion. 597 people were able to terminate their pregnancy abroad in the second trimester. The financial support exceeded 420,000 PLN (£79,500)
Her baby could not possibly survive. Still they decided she should have it
Kasia Strek, Warsaw | Peter Conradi
Saturday November 07 2020
Sitting on a hard plastic seat in the corridor of the Bielanski Hospital in
north Warsaw last week, waiting for her abortion pill to take effect,
Malgorzata quietly recounted her struggle to get a termination for a foetal
abnomality in a country bitterly divided over the sanctity of unborn life.
While huge crowds have been on the streets to oppose a hardening of Poland’s already
strict abortion laws, Malgorzata has had to travel from hospital to hospital to
find one willing to help her.
It was six weeks ago, during the 12th week of her pregnancy, that the
34-year-old businesswoman learnt there was something wrong with the baby she
was carrying: it was too small, did not move much and there was an abnormality
in the jawbone.
Marta Bucholc, Maciej Komornik
6 November 2020
The abortion ruling of Poland’s politically servile Constitutional Tribunal was a debt repaid to Law and Justice’s rightwing Catholic constituency after its re-election last year. The reaction has been the biggest wave of demonstrations in the country since 1989. But the protest movement may be less of a threat to the government than conflicts within the rightwing alliance itself.
On 22 October 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland ruled abortion on the grounds of foetal abnormality to be unconstitutional. This effectively eliminated the possibility for legal abortion. Of the 1110 pregnancies legally terminated in Poland in 2019, a very small number in any case, 97% were because of foetal abnormalities. Should the ruling take effect, it would mean that abortion will only be permitted if a pregnancy is a result of a crime (such as rape or incest), or if it poses a danger to the pregnant woman’s life or health. The doctors and other people soliciting or assisting the termination of a pregnancy for foetal abnormalities would be criminally liable.
Charities report rise in Maltese requests for abortion pills during lockdown
Women in Malta, where abortion is banned, have been unable to travel abroad for terminations
Lucy Mansfield
Published on Fri 19 Jun 2020
Women in Malta seeking an abortion during the pandemic are being forced to procure their own miscarriage or keep an unwanted pregnancy, even when the child has a severe abnormality.
Overseas charities have reported large increases in requests for abortion pills from women in Malta during the pandemic. Women On Web, an online community based in the Netherlands, received 45 pill requests in March and 47 in April, up from 18 in February, with three women who requested abortion pills saying they had been raped by their partner during lockdown.
Here’s why there should be no gestational limits for abortion
August 12, 2019
Erica Millar
Family planning organisation and abortion provider Marie Stopes today warned that Australian women face a confusing patchwork of state-based laws and service shortages that restrict access to abortions, based on where they live.
At the centre of these inconsistent laws is the gestational cut off – the point where the pregnant person is no longer the primary decision-maker and, instead, specific criteria must be met (generally, two doctors must agree that the abortion is necessary on medical and/or social grounds).
Continued: https://theconversation.com/heres-why-there-should-be-no-gestational-limits-for-abortion-121500
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