Abortion in Poland - why is it so difficult to have a calm discussion?

Attempts to liberalize the law on termination of pregnancy date back at least to the interwar period. At that time, the pro-abortion campaign was led by, among others, Irena Krzywicka and Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, whose main goal was to eliminate the dangerous abortion underground and educate society. The Conscious Motherhood Clinic run by Żeleński and other doctors was the first facility that tried to disseminate reliable information about family planning among women and provide them with preventive measures available at that time. Krzywicka and Żeleński were also active in journalism, and their texts have unfortunately not lost their relevance – Żeleński's most famous text, "Piekło kobiet", although published in 1933, contains a discussion of problems that still exist today, such as the large number of myths and false information about termination of pregnancy and the great social pressure incited by conservative circles.

It would seem that the clinics established in the 1930s are the foundation for social changes that will take place over time through the gradual liberalization of legal regulations. Unfortunately, 60 years after the publication of "Women's Hell", a law comes into force that tightens the previous law. According to the regulations in force in the Polish People's Republic, abortion was permitted in three cases - in the event of medical indications concerning the fetus or the pregnant woman, in the event of pregnancy resulting from a crime, and in the event of difficult social conditions. In the early 1990s, a law was passed that made causing the "death of a conceived child" punishable, and the provision concerning social conditions was also removed. Spontaneous protests begin outside the Sejm, and a movement for a referendum on abortion is also formed. It is led by Barbara Labuda, who in her speech demands that "women should not be treated like five-year-old girls".

In the following years, the positions of politicians are constantly changing, but there is no radical revolution, and as a result, various initiatives are undertaken without official support from the authorities. In 2003, the Langenort clinic ship arrives in Władysławowo. It belongs to a Dutch organization, and at sea it is subject to the laws of its home country - abortion is legal in the Netherlands, so women who decide to have the procedure on a ship do not break the law. Protests appear, but public support for the liberalization of the regulations is constantly growing. A few years later, the First Lady Maria Kaczyńska invites journalists associated with the political left to the Presidential Palace and together with them (successfully!) appeals not to tighten the anti-abortion law. Everyone is surprised by this move, especially politicians from the Law and Justice party. The Church also speaks out - it is then that Father Tadeusz Rydzyk addresses Kaczyńska with the words "you witch, I'll give you!", for which, by the way, he will never apologize.

In recent years, the project of a total abortion ban has been coming back like a boomerang, resulting in, among other things, the next Black Protests. All the time, representatives of the pro-life and pro-choice communities have been clashing in social campaign wars full of bloody posters, and the government seems to return to the topic of controversial laws at convenient times for itself. What do women who are determined to terminate their pregnancies do in the meantime? They usually try to undergo the procedure in foreign clinics. They can contact organizations such as Aunt Basia, which helps organize abortions in Germany. In Poland, the Abortion Dream Team, the heroines of the infamous cover of "Wysokie Obcasy", fight to disseminate proven knowledge and enable access to safe medical abortion, which with their slogan "Abortion is OK" printed on T-shirts unleashed a real media storm - even some left-wing circles spoke out against them. However, ADT addressed something that representatives of political groups rarely address – the individual experiences of women, which may be very different and which should not be used as a political bargaining chip.

The quality of the discussion is also greatly influenced by who speaks and how. Let's take the now famous meeting on TVN24, in which only men took part in the discussion on abortion. The fact that not a single woman was invited to the studio is often given as a self-explanatory picture of the level of the discussion on abortion in Poland. According to many people, the use of the terms pro-choice and pro-life is also unfortunate - such a view falsely implies that supporters of the pro-choice movement are therefore anti-life, while it cannot be denied that their opponents are certainly anti-choice, although they do not want to define themselves in this way. There is no shortage of voices that the conservative camp is only interested in "life" until the moment of birth - Professor Bogdan Chazan is said to have never been interested in the fate of a disabled child and its family after he blocked desperate parents from obtaining the help they needed during a difficult pregnancy.

Why are we so unable to reach an agreement? In such cases, it is common to say that both sides are to blame, but is that really the case this time? For many years, there has been a struggle to introduce reliable sex education in schools. Implementing a well-prepared program could contribute to a more informed sexual life, which would result in, among other things, a decrease in the number of unwanted pregnancies. However, conservative circles are still opposed to this. By denying society both education and the ability to make their own decisions, women are still treated like the five-year-old girls from Labuda's speech from over two decades ago. When will the government finally recognize that they are already adults?

Epilogue of Asia Lewicka

It would seem that after the Black Protests the specter of tightening the abortion law would pass, but the topic returned in 2020, in the middle of the crisis related to the coronavirus pandemic. First in April, when the Sejm voted on the "Stop Abortion" bill regarding a complete ban on this procedure, and due to the threat of an epidemic, only lightning bolts and coat hangers were hung in windows as a sign of opposition to tightening the law. In the second half of October, a truck with anti-abortion slogans and... the aforementioned photo of the Abortion Dream Team signed "Abortion Killing Team" drove out onto the streets of Warsaw. Its appearance was related to the fact that, at the request of a group of MPs, on October 22, the Constitutional Tribunal was to rule on whether abortion in the case of severe fetal defects is consistent with the Constitution. The case was doubly controversial. Firstly, because the research conducted by CBOS from 1992 to 2016 always showed that the majority of Poles believed that abortion in this case should be legal (between 53% and 71% of respondents agreed with this statement). Secondly, the current composition of the Tribunal is not considered by all legal circles to be, nomen omen, constitutional, due to the laws that led to its election. It is also worth adding that abortions due to fetal defects constitute over 90% of legal procedures of this type in Poland, so their ban would be almost equivalent to eliminating legal abortion.

It is no wonder then that when the Tribunal's ruling declared abortion for embryopathological reasons to be unconstitutional (based on not particularly scientific arguments), a large part of Polish society lost its nerve. Protests broke out in large and small cities under slogans containing vulgarities suggesting that the ruling party and the Catholic Church, which largely influenced the Tribunal's ruling, should go away (euphemistically speaking). As I write these words, a discussion is rolling through the media about whether vulgarities should be used in protests, and Professor Bralczyk, among others, claims that an uncultured slogan harms its authors . Perhaps the vulgarities could have been avoided, but it is hard to hide emotions when the law clearly opposes the will of the majority of citizens. So will it finally be possible to talk calmly about abortion in Poland? It is still not known. However, it must be admitted that at the moment there is no sign of agreement. Both sides of the dispute are relentlessly fighting for their right, and while opponents of abortion may be pleased that the law has been adjusted to their views, supporters of choice are uniting in large numbers on the streets, and the controversial Abortion Dream Team has already raised over a million zlotys in 5 days to support its further activities.