Abortion helped in bringing down the government in Poland, but do not hope for radical change
Photo Courtesy: Lukasz Katlewa
October 22, 2020: the Polish Constitutional Tribunal declares abortion in cases of foetal impairments unconstitutional. This means abortion is legal in Poland only in the case of incest, rape, or if the mother’s life or health is at risk. Despite the ban originating from a judicial body, few are confused. The Tribunal is seen as controlled by the ruling PiS party. Therefore, when protesters took to the streets after the ruling, the parliament, PiS headquarters, and notably the house of the party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, were also targets. Despite attempts by the police to pacify the demonstrations, Poland experienced the largest protests since the fall of communism.
Fast forward three years and the ban is still very much intact. The party failed to keep its majority in recent elections, and the coalition of the centre-right Third Way, centrist Civic Coalition, and The Left is all but official. While many will claim other issues, such as corruption scandals, democratic backsliding or inflation, played the leading role, the abortion ban was crucial in the fall of the government.
Scandals and backsliding were an issue from the day 1 of the PiS rule in 2015. Despite that, in the 2019 election, they actually increased their support. During the last term, there was only one moment when the party’s support dropped and never fully recovered. October 2023. Before the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling, the party was fighting for 40%. Within a few days, the party support was only slightly above 30%. We would never see such a drop.
The reason for the abortion ban succeeding in decreasing the PiS support is straightforward. In contrast to other controversial decisions, the party’s voters were affected. When judges were being prosecuted, few felt directly affected. When various scandals were exposed, PiS could simply say others did the same. Something that would be hard to argue, considering most of the future governing coalition will be composed of parties that have previously been in power and were all affected by major scandals. Some would say this is the beauty of young Eastern European democracies such as Poland.
With abortion, PiS voters were affected. Despite Poland being a highly conservative country, at least for the EU standards, opposition to abortion was never strong, even among those on the right. Call it a communist legacy, as back then, abortion was largely available and widespread. While many identify as Catholics, the Church always failed to convince the Poles that abortion is unacceptable. It seems that many more people consider abortion as something more personal. It cannot be branded as an unknown boogeyman, similar to migrants or LGBT. Ultimately, it might be, my partner, daughter, sister or I who will need it once.
As a result, it should not come as a surprise that only 13% of Poles supported the Tribunal’s ruling. Although the subsequent protests rightfully bore the face of a young woman, it was the loss of support among all age groups after the ruling that led to the government’s defeat in the election.
What now, then? One would hope that considering its effect on the election, abortion will be one of the priorities of the new government. This does not seem to be the case. The Third Way wants to come back to the so-called “compromise” that existed before 2020, while The Left and the Civic Coalition both promised to legalise abortion on demand. Rather than solve the disagreement, reports indicate that both sides decided abortion would not be part of the coalition agreement.
The new government will probably try to excuse it saying any liberalisation would be blocked anyway through a presidential veto or being declared unconstitutional once again. Well, trying never killed anybody, and some short-term solutions that could solve the issue with the Constitutional Tribunal have been proposed, such as just decriminalising abortion for now. But even this, for some, might be too much.