Hospitals and health centres in Poland that refuse to perform abortions could lose up to 2% of their state funding under new measures from the country’s leftist-liberal multiparty coalition government. The moves are designed to water down 2021 legislation tightening the rules on medical abortion.
The fast-tracked new regulations came into effect earlier this month after being rushed through the Polish Parliament (Sejm). The first fine saw authorities pursue lawfare against multiple health centres that refused a woman undergoing psychiatric care an abortion.
Currently, under Polish law, abortion is restricted except in instances of rape, incest, and threats to the mother’s health—including mental health. The issue is seen as a political tool with which the new progressive Tusk government can undo the legacy of its conservative Law and Justice (PiS) predecessor.
Responding to attempts to ease access to abortion, tens of thousands of Polish Catholics rallied nationwide on Sunday, warning against “abortion ‘on demand’, attacks on the identity of marriage and the family, moral corruption of children, taking away our sovereignty.”’
Both abortion and gay marriage are key policy goals of Tusk’s controversial administration as it engages in a bitter internal power struggle with institutional remnants of the old conservative establishment, culminating in its jailing of multiple lawmakers earlier this year.
Previous attempts in 2020 to protect the rights of the unborn by the PiS-led government resulted in an NGO-led attack on the country’s pro-life ethos. The introduction of abortion on demand is a key symbolic component of Poland’s “march to modernity,” according to Tusk.
A total of 161 legal abortions occurred in Poland in 2022. The new government has also eroded the so-called ‘conscience clause’ that gives doctors an ethical opt-out of performing an abortion.
The drive for abortion liberalisation is spearheaded by the Left (Lewica) party in Tusk’s coalition government. It has the moral support of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in favour of greater abortion access—and LGBT rights—in December.
Despite signs of PiS stabilising its electoral base and nationalist Confederation Party polling in third place, Tusk and his Civic Platform party solidified their political dominance in this month’s European elections. Symptomatically, Brussels has strategically buried its ‘rule-of-law’ hatchet against Poland by unlocking €137 billion of EU funding for a now compliant Europhile government.
