Three former Polish first ladies have denounced a proposal to tighten the country’s abortion law

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Three former Polish first ladies on Tuesday denounced a proposal to tighten the country’s abortion law, already one of the most restrictive in Europe, saying it would only “aggravate women’s tragedy”.



“It is with great concern that we view the idea of abandoning compromise regarding the anti-abortion law of 1993,” Danuta Wałęsa, Jolanta Kwaśniewska and Anna Komorowska said in an open letter.

The current legislation, which is very restrictive but was seen as a compromise between the state and the dominant Roman Catholic Church, bans all terminations except when the pregnancy results from rape or incest, poses a health risk to the mother, or if the foetus is severely deformed.

Street protests over abortion law are latest skirmish in battle for Poland’s soul Read more

Now anti-abortion activists backed by the Church – some 90% of Poles identify as Catholic – have tabled a citizen’s bill in parliament that would allow abortion only if necessary to save the mother’s life.

The proposal would also increase the maximum jail term for people who perform abortions from two years to five.

Danuta Wałęsa, the wife of ex-president and Nobel Peace laureate Lech Wałęsa, made comments in a radio interview directed at Jarosław Kaczyński, the unmarried leader of the governing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.

“I urge you to come to your senses. You don’t have children, you don’t have a wife. What do you know about the life of bees, given that you don’t live in a beehive?” she said on Radio Zet.

The citizen’s bill has sparked demonstrations across Poland, with protesters over the weekend waving wire coat hangers, sometimes used in the past for crude and dangerous self-terminations.

Feminist groups estimate that between 100,000 and 150,000 women either undergo illegal abortions in Poland or turn to clinics abroad.

Legal abortions in the country of 38 million people are limited to around 700 to 1,800 per year.

“Every abortion is a tragedy, but we should not aggravate women’s tragedy by forcing them to give birth to children of rape or forcing them to risk their own life or health or that of their child,” said the wives of former presidents Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Bronisław Komorowski and Wałęsa.

Liberal lawmakers recently called on the current conservative president’s wife Agata Duda to take a stand on the issue, but the president’s office made it clear she would not comment.

Local media have recalled that an earlier attempt to tighten the abortion law met with opposition from then first lady Maria Kaczyńska, who was the sister-in-law of the PiS leader.

She and her husband Lech Kaczyński were among the 96 people – most of them senior state officials – who died in a 2010 presidential plane crash in Russia.