🤰🇵🇱⚖️🧵Polish Constitutional Tribunal has ruled that #abortion due to defects of the foetus is unconstitutional. These days the global trend is to liberalise abortion laws, but it is 2020 so here we are with an effective ban on 98% of legal abortions in Poland. (1/6)
It is not the first time the Polish Constitutional Tribunal is doing a reverse Roe vs Wade. For a brief moment in mid-90s, abortion was allowed on social and personal grounds. This #law was struck down by the CT in 1997. (2/6)
The two remaining grounds for abortion are: a threat to the health of the woman or the pregnancy being a result of sexual assault/incest. Legal abortions on these grounds are exceedingly rare. (3/6)
The decision of the CT effectively destroys the so-called “abortion compromise”, where the Catholic Church and the centre-right side of the Polish political establishment accepted the existence of abortion on the three limited grounds and did not challenge them. (4/6)
In practice, Polish abortion laws amount to straight-up discrimination on grounds of income. Middle-class women can afford a trip to the Czech Republic or Slovakia, where abortion clinics with Polish websites and staff are happy to help them for a modest fee. (5/6)
Once again, the Polish Parliament refuses to take the responsibility for restricting the abortion laws and the ruling party "uses" the Constitutional Tribunal, currently fully supportive of PiS, as an ersatz lawmaker. The cowardice of an utmost degree. (6/6)
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