Newstatesman
Officially, Poland is a country that celebrates families and motherhood. It recently announced new child benefits, and the government has launched a programme to encourage young Poles to start a family earlier in life. But the rhetoric contrasts with the increasingly difficult choices facing pregnant women and would-be mothers: a near-total ban on abortion – combined with legal ambiguity – means that women face increasingly difficult choices concerning their bodies. New rules that entered into force earlier this year have made the country’s abortion rules, which are among the toughest in Europe, even more restrictive. Now a government plan to keep track of every pregnancy digitally is making some women feel even more controlled.
Since coming to power in 2015, the socially conservative Law and Justice (PiS in Polish) party has presented itself as the champion of the Polish family. This has had tangible financial benefits for millions of families: in 2016, the government introduced a monthly payment of 500 złoty (£90) per month per child from the second child onwards, which has since been expanded to all children.
Yet in practice, PiS has championed a narrow vision of the family, supported by the Roman Catholic Church, which remains influential in Poland. This includes presenting gay people as a threatand further restricting women’s access to a safe and legal abortion. Access to abortion in Poland was already severely limited – the rules, which dated back to 1993, limited it to just three cases: when the mother’s health or life is at risk, cases of rape or incest, or cases of severe foetal defects. Then, in October 2020, the PiS-loyal Constitutional Tribunal deemed abortion in this third scenario unconstitutional. Despite huge protestsacross the country, some of the largest since the fall of communism in 1989, the ruling entered into force earlier this year…
