Poland faulted by rights court for abortion restrictions and legal confusion |
The debate over reproductive rights in Poland has once again returned to the spotlight, this time through a landmark judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In a ruling delivered on November 13, Europe’s top rights court found that Poland violated the private life of a woman who had to travel abroad for an abortion-an outcome that the judges attributed to legal uncertainty created by the country’s own institutions. The verdict underscores not only the personal trauma experienced by the woman but also the broader constitutional and political turmoil that has shaped Poland’s abortion landscape in recent years.
The case began when a woman from Krakow, 15 weeks pregnant, received devastating news: her fetus had a serious genetic disorder. Under Polish law in place at the time, she had the right to terminate her pregnancy legally on the grounds of severe fetal abnormalities. But this right evaporated almost overnight after the Polish Constitutional Court issued a ruling in October 2020 banning abortion in cases of fetal defects-one of the few remaining legal grounds for termination in a country already known for having some of Europe’s most restrictive reproductive laws.
What followed was a period of unprecedented legal ambiguity. Although the court’s decision had been announced, its publication in the official legal journal-a required step for it to take effect-was delayed for several months. This bureaucratic limbo created widespread confusion among doctors, hospitals, and women seeking abortions. Physicians feared criminal liability; hospitals........