Poland remains to be at forefront of battle over women’s rights and women’s right to a safe and legal abortion. In recent months, despite the success of the “Black Protest” from last year we are witnessing attempts to further restrict the current, already very strict, legislation. However, this time the anti-choice groups, with clear and vocal support from the Catholic Church, are not aiming for a total ban of abortion or criminalizing women for the procedures. They are targeting one of the three legal instances which allow for a lawful termination of pregnancy – that is the situation in which women experience a pregnancy with fetal damage. In year 2016 there had been 1042 abortions that fall into this category out of a total of 1098 legal abortions in the entire country. 55 abortions were performed due to threat to woman’s life and 1 as a result of criminal act.

At this moment there are three legal initiatives aimed to ban abortion due to fetal malformation: civic initiative undertaken by radical anti-abortion organization “Life and Family” in cooperation with Citizen Go; draft legislation submitted by a group of 100 right wing MPs and the Constitutional complaint regarding whether abortion due to fetal impairment is constitutional.