Citizen-led Initiative on Abortion Law in Poland

I was reading today in GW, that Poland is planning to change the abortion law. As of now the abortion is banned except for one of the following situations: 1. When the woman's life or health is endangered by the continuation of pregnancy,

2. When the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act, or
3. When the fetus is seriously malformed

According to this article (which is in Polish, but states what I summarize in here) there is a citizen-led initiative (projekt obywatelski) that was filed in Sejm in April that would would ban abortion altogether. The initiators of the projects managed to collect 600,000 signatures. I don't know if this project would be voted on, and if so when.

Abortion from my perspective is a very grey area. Yes, a woman should have the right to decide about her life, but on the other hand it's the beginning of a human life. I'm not going into the details whether I'm for or against the current status quo on abortion.

But would you vote for or against the "Project obywatelski" if you were a Sejm deputy?

I would vote against it. To me it's just total compromising the rights of a real citizen in the name of a hypothetical one. On cases like that the choice should be left to the person who will have to deal with the difficult consequences her whole life.

Do you think there is a chance the Sejm will vote in favor of this initiative?

I like this Polish law. I think when a woman screws around and gets pregnant, she should be responsible for her actions. If she started a new life because she was stupid, that's just too bad, if she doesn't want the baby after it's born, there are millions of people who will adopt it, but women should learn abstinence and respect their bodies. The Polish law is very good because under those three circumstances the woman can get an abortion for incidents that did not happen with her intention.

People should learn to be responsible for their actions.

Unlikely: too many people make to much money from the abortion ban being in place. The only women in Poland who want abortions and don't get them are the very poor, everybody else either goes to a backstreet doctor or takes a trip across the nearest border.

Nope. It's the same old, same old - Poland is exactly like America in this respect - a constant struggle between "ban" and "no ban". The current law is the compromise that most people agree with - and the majority of the Sejm supports it.

not true. and even if it were, future parents have to meet certain criteria.

It's not about women being responsible for their actions. It's about forcing women to keep malformed children, children conceived in rape and keeping pregnancies that endanger their life.

Abortion in these cases are already permitted, aren't they?

Yes, they are. But according to the initiative, all abortions would be prohibited. And this thing has 600 000 signatures.


There were only 500 official abortions in Poland for the three reasons I named in the thread. I don't think this ban is likely to influence the cash flow in the underground.

Speaking of which, do you know somebody who used underground services? What I'm asking is where your information is coming from. Because underground is underground they do not provide statistics , at least reliable ones.

urszula wrote:


there are public responsibilities with this though.

statistically, "unwanted pregnancies" occur most often among lower class citizens, often times outright poor citizens. this immediately puts a large burden on the tax payer because unwanted children growing up in a low income family = criminals. whether the women deserve some sort of "punishment" for being irresponsible, well, that's another discussion, but in the interest of the entire country, and you're wallet, when a poor 16 year old girl from Rinky Dink Zdroj gets pregnant and wants an abortion because she knows that she doesn't have the means to raise the child, on paper, an abortion would be in the best interest of the state.

now, i'm not going to argue with someone about how it's so immoral to think of a child only from a financial perspective....but if a 16 year old girl raises some kid in squallor and he ends up stealing and cheating because of his circumstances growing up....the only thing you, as a citizen of this country, are concerned about is your personal safety and how much it's going to cost you because he's a criminal.

Sorry. I didn't read your OP properly.
I agree with your stance.
I can only add finance and social engineering arguments are the most callous.

I didn't quote any stats. and how do I know underground exists? When I lived in Poland, right after the ban on abortion was introduced, there were tons of ads in every newspaper of that sort: "Trips to Austria. Excellent medical services for women". That's how I know the underground exists.

The 500 I mentioned are the abortions that were conducted as a result of the three conditions where abortion is not banned..

it was also talked about in here

And when the baby's father is its grandfather or uncle? Or when the foetus isn't viable or is so profoundly disabled that it will have a short and joyless life?


Not even thousands, and for the most profoundly handicapped, not even dozens.

Abortion is easily available in every large town in Poland - doctors advertise in the nespapers. What this 'citizen-led initiative' is about is religious obsessives and extremists wanting to impose their views on others. There was a small group of them in Warsaw today holding up pictures of foetuses. A weird looking bunch - they were being ignored.

not to mention if she gets raped. is it still her fault and her responsibility?

what if it's an ectopic pregnancy. they're not that uncommon. it's extremely dangerous to the mother and the fetus cannot survive anyway.

What bothers me the most about is that Sejm would even consider voting on a ban that abuses citizens' rights.

Who cares about women's right to live. We need to save the fetus.

I read yesterday that some right-wing nut said about the 500 legal abortions: "we killed legally 10 buses of children". If he only had a few working brain cells to imagine the children on those buses; one third malformed and handicaped, one third will never meet their mother and some one third is loathed by their mother for being a result of a violent act. It doesn't look like these buses were going to a picnic.

I know of a woman who was preganant with a foetus that wasn't even a foetus - it wasn't alive nor ever would be and didn't resemble a person. She lives in south-east Poland where no hospital in the region would terminate the pregnancy despite it being legal in her situation - she had to borrow money from a rich relative and have it done privately in Warsaw - the alternative would have been to continue for nine months knowing she had to give birth to something that wasn't a baby.

here is another question (or a few):
those people so vocal about banning all abortions, not matter what -
are they as vocal about initiatives to improve sex education in schools? probably not.
are they promoting access to contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancies? highly doubt it.
are they going to chip in to build facilities for low-income pregnant women and new mothers? that's probably a no.
are they going to volunteer their time or money to provide day care, so that the women can go out, get a job, and support themselves and their babies? nope.

are they going to petition their priests and nuns to do that? not really - although they should, they do nothing useful all day long anyway, the least they could do is babysit

will they do anything to help provide 24/7 care to all those disabled children? wouldn't hold my breath eihter.

it's just so much easier to be all self-righetous and hypocritical and blame the victim.

Well - a clear rejection of such an initiative is actually a good thing, as it puts off the debate for another ten years or so.

Absolutely against that project.And I really hope that it will fall in Sejm.

ItsAllAboutMe wrote:...
right on.

ItsAllAboutMe wrote:


do you mean to say that moving slowly.....everywhere you go.....and reading the same book over and over is unproductive? ;) well, at least nobody's paying them for it......wait.......NOW WAIT A DAMN MINUTE!!!!!!!

I agree

It passed it looks like:

Like the old law wasn't extreme enough...There was a time not long ago when swedish women travelled to Poland to get an abortion.

My opinion is that abortion is something serious and should only be considered a last resort, not an alternative to condoms. A married couple with good income shouldn't get an abortion, for example.

But the choice and option to do so should be legal.

That's exactly what I think. It looks though that an embryo has more political rights in Poland than women.

What's your problem people! If you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex. Simple.

I think you have some problems with reading comprehension. It's not about abortion in general, it's about extending the ban to the situations when

1. When the woman's life or health is endangered by the continuation of pregnancy,
2. When the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act, or
3. When the fetus is seriously malformed

My personal position now is that law here has to acknowledge that strict definitions don't serve a useful purpose. For example, abortion could be easily justified on the basis that an embryo or foetus don't constitute personhood and thus we are not killing a person in an abortion. There is also no sentience until 22 weeks into the pregnancy. It would appear that all those pro-abortion folks have all the cards but we should see the entity as a child to be and thus afford it all the protections we can. God designed it that way so, like a project (sorry to limit life in this way, it's only an analogy), goes through several necessary steps/phases in order to come to fruition. We should protect this natural state of development but there are special cases.

I think you do.
I wasn't referring to this law, I was referring to the general subject of this matter.

Why shouldn't it be abortion in general? If abortion is such a heinous sin why isn't it mentioned in the Bible? The fact is the Roman Catholic Church uses the abortion issue solely as a wedge issue to divide the American people politically. Standard Operating Procedure for the Roman Catholic Church, masters at Political Deception. If the Polish People knew of the extent of the Roman Church's involvement with the Nazi regime in the 1930's and 40's the Polish People wouldn't be "So Catholic".

I agree, it is a very grey area. Unfortunately for the unborn there's no "choice" for them. In my view abortion should be legal but also extremely rare.