13 June 2025. Every year, thousands of women leave Poland to terminate their pregnancies. Those who can’t, do so in unsafe conditions, risking their lives. This well-documented reality was formally recognized in an investigative report published in 2024 by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The report concluded that the criminalization of abortion assistance, combined with rare legal exceptions and frequent inaccessibility of services, prevents the majority of Polish women from exercising the right to safe and legal abortion.
Some of the most restrictive legislation in Europe
This observation is part of a backdrop of continuing legislative regression. While abortion had already been severely restricted in Poland since 1993, a 2020 decision by the freshly reformed and politically captured Polish Constitutional Court scrapped the exception making abortion legal in case of non-viable pregnancy (malformation of the foetus), thus reducing the legal grounds for abortion to cases of danger to the life or health of the pregnant woman, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape. Prior to this decision, non-viable pregnancies accounted for around 98% of all abortions performed each year in Poland. Since then, the right to abortion has been severely restricted, notably under the PiS government, which promoted traditional conservative positions on social and family issues.
As a result, even when allowed by law, abortion has often been made inaccessible in practice. Even in the rare cases where the conditions for access are met, doctors are increasingly reluctant to perform them, for fear of being criminalized, which severely limits the cases in which an abortion would fall under the first exception where it is still considered legal under the reformed abortion law. Several women have died as a result of medical staff refusing to perform abortions. Between the Constitutional Tribunal’s decisions in 2020 and 2023, six women died as a result of the restrictions on access to abortion under the new law. While Polish law does not prohibit a woman from carrying out an abortion on her own, abortion assistance is prohibited and punishable by three years of imprisonment under article 152 of the penal code.
This repressive framework has led to the prosecution and conviction of several advocates who helped other women obtain safe abortions. It was the case of Justyna Wydrzyńska, who was tried and sentenced to eight months community service after providing a woman with abortion pills. In 2020, Justyna Wydrzyńska, one of the founders of the NGO Abortion Dream Team, helped a pregnant woman who was a victim of domestic violence obtain abortion drugs. She was charged with "assisted abortion" and "possession of drugs without authorization to market them". On 13 February 2025, the Court of Appeal overturned this conviction and ordered a new trial before a court of first instance. This decision offers the hope of a discontinuation of the prosecution in a case that has become emblematic of the criminalization of assistance in matters of reproductive rights.
In this context, the dissemination of information on abortion services, which remains decriminalized for the time being, is one of the last legal levers available to support women wishing to terminate their pregnancy. But this right, too, is under repeated attack. Anti-rights and anti-choice movements, which have been gaining momentum in recent years emboldened by the ultra-conservative agenda promoted by the previous PiS government and with tight links to the global anti-abortion movement, continue their campaign against women’s rights by pressing for further restrictions on access to this essential information.
Despite these attacks, the country’s women continue to fight to maintain this right, as revealed by the opening in March 2025 of an abortion center, located opposite Parliament, which provides information on abortions abroad, support for those who decide to carry out a medical abortion independently, and the possibility of carrying out a pregnancy test.
An uncertain future for access to abortion in Poland
Following the last parliamentary elections in October 2023, which saw the end of PiS’s eight-year rule and gave hope in Poland’s democratic restoration, the new Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, pledged to review the legislation to make access to abortion free, safe and legal for all.
In 2024, for the first time since the adoption of the Polish Constitution, four bills aimed at liberalizing abortion passed their first reading. A bill tabled by the United Left to decriminalize abortion assistance was defeated by three votes on July 12, 2024. Two other reform proposals, including a bill tabled by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Liberal Civic Platform-led coalition, aim to legalize abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy, while a text proposed by the Third Way (an alliance of the conservative Peasant Party and the Christian Democratic Movement) proposes a return to the "compromise" in force between 1993 and 2020. This "compromise" authorized abortion in the following cases: danger to the health or life of the woman, malformation of the fetus, or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest. However, none of these proposals has seen the light so far. In the run-up to the presidential election, legislative work was suspended, as the coalition feared that its continuation could influence the outcome of the vote or turnout. Following the election result, any further attempt to reform the law by further liberalising abortion may be obstructed by presidential veto, in an attempt by current opposition party PiS to sabotage government-led initiatives aimed at restoring the RoL and fundamental rights in the country.
In parallel with the parliamentary debates, a notable breakthrough came with the publication in 2024, by the Ministry of Health, of a regulation stipulating that healthcare providers who receive public funds to provide obstetrics and gynecological care are obliged to offer abortions in the cases provided for by law. Hospitals that fail to do so can be fined up to 2% of the value of their contract with the National Health Fund (NFZ), the body that finances public healthcare in Poland. In the most serious cases, the NFZ may terminate its contract with the hospital.
At the beginning of 2025, the government welcomed an increase in the number of legal abortions, with around 750 cases registered. Although the Polish authorities continue to emphasize that abortion is now more accessible in the country’s hospitals, these announcements need to be qualified. In reality, many women continue to encounter persistent reluctance on the part of medical staff, sometimes hostile reception conditions and even ill-treatment. Moreover, legal restrictions still severely limit the number of abortions performed in hospitals. This is borne out by the figures of the "Abortion Dream Team", which, over the same period, helped almost 47,000 women to have an abortion.
Lastly, in February 2024, the Polish Parliament approved a law liberalizing access to the morning-after pill for women over the age of 15. However, Poland’s conservative president Andrzej Duda, a member of the PiS party and an outspoken anti-abortionist, vetoed it, citing "standards for protecting children’s health" as the reason. The government then announced that it would circumvent this obstruction by publishing a regulation allowing the pill to be delivered on prescription by a pharmacist.
Following this election, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) is concerned about the development of proposals for laws providing for the liberalization of the right to abortion which are currently being reviewed regarding Karol Nawroci’s position and the potential use of presidential veto.