Rights groups fear a legal provision in Poland requiring doctors to collect records on pregnancies could create a ‘pregnancy register’ to monitor abortions.
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In Berlin leftist graffiti dominates the streets. Unless you venture far enough into Pankow, which I cannot recommend, you’ll likely only find posters, street art, stickers, and graffiti that match Berlin’s politics: left-wing, queer, and pro-reproductive rights. Less than a two-hour drive away in Poland, it’s an entirely different story. There’s a Polish joke that goes: “if you’re standing on the street and there’s an anti-abortion poster behind your back and you don’t see one in front of you, it means you’ve reached the border.”
Since 1993, abortion has been illegal in Poland except in cases of fetal abnormalities, a serious risk to the life or health of the pregnant person, or rape or incest. In October 2020, the country’s Constitutional Tribunal struck the first of those–fetal abnormalities–from the list of permitted cases. And although this law only came into effect in January 2021, hospitals began refusing people last fall. Contraception is availabl
Maja, a 27-year-old from a small town in the northeastern Polish region of Podlasie, was neither financially nor emotionally ready for another child when she found out she was pregnant.
With legal abortion in her country not being an option, she contacted a group providing underground postal access to abortion pills and took them at home while breastfeeding her 11-month-old baby.
Another woman, Anita, wanted a child but learned when she was 13 weeks pregnant that due to a congenital defect, her baby would die within a few hours of birth - if not before.
Due to a recent change in Polish law that forbids women from terminating pregnancies even in cases of severe and irreversible fetal defects, the young woman was told to wait until she miscarried.