Rumours have been circulated online that Prime Minister Sanna Marin promised free abortion for Polish women in Finland if she were to win the elections. She denies the claim. In fact, the story appears to have been a fabrication by a leftist MP from Poland after visiting Helsinki, nearly causing a diplomatic incident.
After the introduction of a near-total ban on abortion in 2021, the issue became one of the most controversial topics in Poland, dividing the electorate and prompting constant international criticism. The debate flared up again in the past few months, after a “citizen’s legislative initiative” reached the parliament aiming to introduce a law that would have also banned the “public promotion” of abortion in the country, but was subsequently thrown out by the lawmakers.
A few days before the decision was made, however, a delegation of the Polish party ‘The Left’ (Lewica) was travelling to Helsinki to meet with Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, where a dubious arrangement may or may not have taken place. Afterward, accompanied by a picture of the meeting, Robert Biedroń, the leader of The Left, tweeted that his party brokered “an agreement on free abortion for Polish women in Finland.”
“Sanna Marin’s office wants to help Polish women access their basic right,” Biedroń continued, clearly trying to impress his electorate back home. “[We] are starting to discuss details [and] in the new term of the Finnish government we will finalize the issue.”
The tweet largely went unnoticed at first outside Poland, but as the weeks passed and Finland edged closer to the parliamentary election, scheduled for April 2nd this weekend, the opposition in Helsinki started to pick up the story and run it against the liberal PM’s campaign.
“The abortion promise is senseless and heartless—our health services are needed for Finns, not for destroying the lives of Polish children,” wrote Päivi Räsänen, former interior minister and Chairwoman of the Christian Democratic party. “Another reason to vote for the [Christian Democrat’s] voice of reason and at the same time [vote] Marin out of her position.”
However, the story quickly collapsed after the prime minister’s office reacted, saying that it was only a 10 minutes’ worth of “courtesy meeting,” where they indeed discussed the prospects of future cooperation on women’s rights, but “no promises of any kind were made to the delegation.”
After the façade fell, The Left also admitted that it was fake, albeit calling it a “misunderstanding” instead of a fabrication. “We only agreed the discussions on the issue will continue,” Jakub Ratajczak, Biedroń’s assistant said. “It was more about a gesture of solidarity.”
A lie is a lie, nonetheless, and in this case, The Left was using it to gain political advantage, clearly oblivious to the sensitiveness of the debate. “The whole story was made up by [Biedroń and his team], trying to politically capitalize promises of abortion provision,” Jerzy Kwaśniewski, President of Ordo Iuris, a leading Polish legal think tank and human rights NGO, told The European Conservative.
Also, the story turning out to be fake is probably the best outcome for all parties, considering that a real promise like this could have easily caused a full-fledged diplomatic dispute between the two countries. As Kwaśniewski explained it to us,
Polish law set a high threshold of human rights, including the promises of basic human rights [for] the last huge deprived group—people in the prenatal stage of development (especially those with disabilities). Any attempt of foreign government to violate those human rights guarantees should be met with strong diplomatic reaction.
To what extent will this made-up controversy hurt the reelection prospects of Sanna Marin remains to be seen on Sunday. Nonetheless, should it contribute towards the socialists tanking in the polls, then they would have only their fellow leftists to blame for this embarrassing episode.
