‘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

When Legal Uncertainty Violates Reproductive Rights

A.R. v. Poland and the Dynamics of Transnational Legal Mobilization

27 November 2025
Karolina Kocemba

In 2020, the Polish Constitutional Court prohibited abortion sought on the grounds of fetal defects. While the ruling was announced, it was not published for three months, creating a period during which neither pregnant people nor medical providers could be certain of the current legal situation, which could change at any time. Accordingly, on 13 November 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in A.R. v. Poland, ruled that this instability failed to meet the legal certainty required under Article 8 of the ECHR. The situation arose from the delayed and, at that time, unpredictably timed publication, and was intensified by the ongoing constitutional crisis.

Crucially, the case reveals a deeper dimension of legal uncertainty, as both pro-choice and anti-choice actors were actively involved in the A.R. case, seeking to shape the law in opposite directions. The resulting uncertainty is thus not only a product of institutional dysfunction but increasingly a terrain of transnational contestation shaped by competing forms of legal mobilization. This dynamic, in turn, is reflected in the European-level initiative My Voice, My Choice, which explicitly aims to stabilise standards where national systems have become fragmented and uncertain.

Continued: https://verfassungsblog.de/legal-uncertainty-reproductive-rights/

Poland: Abortion rights, the big absentee in the presidential election

13/06/2025
Piotr Lapinski

Karol Nawrocki, the candidate backed by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, was elected President of Poland on Sunday 1 June 2025. While this country is one of the most restrictive European states with abortion legislation, this election raises concerns about the future of abortion rights.

13 June 2025. Every year, thousands of women leave Poland to terminate their pregnancies. Those who can’t, do so in unsafe conditions, risking their lives. This well-documented reality was formally recognized in an investigative report published in 2024 by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The report concluded that the criminalization of abortion assistance, combined with rare legal exceptions and frequent inaccessibility of services, prevents the majority of Polish women from exercising the right to safe and legal abortion.

Continued: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/europe-central-asia/poland/poland-abortion-rights-the-big-absentee-in-the-presidential-election