Poland is proposing to ban ALL abortions. Period. That means rape, incest and if the mother's life is in danger. This is barbaric and regressive
Polish Women Hold 'Black Monday' Strike To Protest Proposed Abortion Ban
In Poland, abortion is already illegal except in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother's life or irreparable damage to a fetus. The legislature is now proposing an absolute ban, carrying jail time of up to five years for both women and their doctors no matter the circumstances of the abortion, The Associated Press reports.
A professor of gender studies at Warsaw University told the National Catholic Reporter earlier this summer that in addition to criminalizing all abortions, the proposed change in the law could also cause women to be imprisoned for a miscarriage if they couldn't prove it was not induced.
Miscarriages could lead to a prison term of up to three years, Elzbieta Korolczuk told the publication.
Korolczuk also told the NCR the law would make doctors afraid to intervene in ectopic pregnancies — when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, a situation that is dangerous for the mother and almost always fatal for the fetus. Reuters reports that some critics have said the law would even discourage doctors from doing prenatal tests, if they carried the risk of miscarriage.
For months, activists in Poland have expressed concerns about the prospect of a total abortion ban.
The conservative Law and Justice Party, a nationalist, pro-Catholic, Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant party, won control of Poland's parliament last year. The party also controls the presidency, and soon moved to curtail the power of Poland's constitutional court. Canada's CBC writes that the party then took control of public broadcasting in Poland.
As NPR wrote in December, after the constraints on the judicial branch were imposed, some women's rights groups in Poland worried that the party would use its consolidated power to criminalize abortion and restrict sex education.
Now the abortion ban is officially on the table.
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I applaud Poland's President Duda for supporting a total ban of abortion -
with no exceptions - in Poland. The only disagreement I have is in giving them (mother to be and the doctor performing the abortion) a five year prison sentence. As I stated before, murder is murder - if someone commits murder the punishment should be far greater than 5 years in prison.
Also, if a Polish woman goes to her doctor in Poland and they have records of her pregnancy they should make sure to follow up and see that the mother to be (if they are still living in Poland) didn't cross the border to have an abortion. If they find that she is no longer pregnant and she has no medical documentation to prove there was a miscarriage - the same charge of murder should apply to her (and the doctor who performed the abortion - regardless of whether he is in Poland or elsewhere) and she should be put on trial for premeditated murder and sentenced accordingly.
I would advise Polish women who think it is their right to commit premeditated murder of a baby - to leave Poland and not return. There is no question that Poland is doing the right thing and I hope other nations will follow. Poland also has a very large Protestant population and I'm sure that they are fully supporting President Duda in his determination to stop the premeditated murder of babies in his country.