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IN POLAND THE LAW ON ABORTION is one of the most restrictive in the European Union, sex education does not exist, and contraception is both expensive and hard to obtain because a medical prescription is often needed.
According to a 1993 law, abortion is allowed only in three cases: when pregnancy is a threat to a woman's life or health; when there is a high possibility of severe malformation or illness of a fetus, confirmed by a prenatal exam; or when a pregnancy is the result of a crime (rape, incest, or pedophilia).1 In other cases it is criminalized. A doctor or anyone else who helps a woman to perform an abortion, including a partner, a family member, or a friend, may be punished with three years of imprisonment. A woman who has aborted is not prosecuted. For more than 20 years this very restrictive law has been called a compromise by conservative, liberal, and social-democratic politicians.
In practice, even in these three cases of technically allowable abortion, it is almost unavailable. A recent study, conducted by the feminist organization Federation for Women and Family Planning, found that due to a lack of official ministerial guidelines and the chilling effects of the law, hospitals either do not have any procedures for abortion (the majority) or they have procedures that are unnecessarily complicated. Moreover, some hospitals told the Federation that, contrary to their financial reports, they do not do abortions.The "conscience clause,''that is, the right to refuse to perform abortion because of religious beliefs, is often invoked.2
Due to these circumstances, the abortion underground is thriving. According to the estimates of the Federation for Women and Family Planning, in Poland 80,000 to 100,000 abortions are performed per year,3 with only some hundreds of these done legally.
There are underground clinics that provide abortions, which are often performed by the same doctors who in public hospitals cite the "conscience clause" in refusing to perform the procedure legally.4 Abortion pills are obtained from Women on Waves, an international organization that provides pills in countries where abortions are illegal; or they are obtained on the black market, though in the latter case women run the risk of receiving fake or adulterated pills. Women also take some legal medicines that...