ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK:
Wanda Nowicka
On Abortion Rights in PolandWanda Nowicka, Director of the Federation for Women and Family Planning in Warsaw, spoke recently in New York at an informal breakfast sponsored by the International Women's Health Coalition. Ms. Nowicka discussed the recent repeal of the liberalized abortion law by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal.
After a brief moment of victory with the passage of the liberalized law, Wanda Nowicka and her colleagues have suffered a huge blow as abortion will once again be illegal and virtually unavailable in public hospitals. The law that the Federation for Women and Family Planning fought for would have allowed for abortions up until the 12th week of pregnancy for women deemed to have financial or emotional difficulties. The Constitutional Tribunal was to check the law's legitimacy against the 1956 Polish constitution. Ms. Nowicka and others claim that the Tribunal went beyond its prescribed duties and made judgements about when life begins. Two-thirds of the Polish Parliament would have to vote against the court's ruling in order to overturn the decision --- a majority which even the most hopeful concede will be impossible to attain.
"Under communism in Poland, abortion was legal and available practically on demand," Ms. Nowicka said. When the democratic government came to power in 1993, abortion, labeled a vestige of communism, was outlawed except in cases of rape, incest, severe birth defects or extreme medical emergency through the Act on Family Planning, Human Embryo Protection and Conditions of Legal Abortion. Because any medical doctor could legally refuse to perform an abortion under the conscience clause of the 1993 Act, even women who fit the criteria for legal abortion were often denied services.
Since 1993, feminists and pro-choice activists in Poland have launched three attempts to change the restrictive abortion law. In 1994 a liberalized abortion law was passed by the Parliament, but Walesa vetoed it. After another failed attempt to pass a liberalized law in 1996, the reproductive rights movement gained renewed hope as a pro-choice president took power. The liberalized law was finally passed by Parliamentarians in August 1996, signed by the president in November, and came into force in January 1997, but the law was never fully implemented.
Although 95% of Poland's population is Roman Catholic, less than 75% are practicing, and an estimated 50-60% of the population is pro-choice. In the face of these divided loyalties, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland has waged an all-out war against legalized abortion. Ms. Nowicka said that a public education campaign launched by the church, as well as protests resembling those at American clinics, placed pressure on Polish doctors to abstain from performing abortions.
"One half of all public hospitals banned abortions and a great number of doctors in public hospitals refused to perform the procedures," Ms. Nowicka said. The city of Krakow passed a measure outlawing abortions in public hospitals and other restrictions were passed by local governments in direct opposition to the law.
Meanwhile, an underground abortion industry has flourished, and Polish women pay exorbitant rates --- 1,000 zloties, the equivalent of 400-600 U.S. dollars --- for clandestine abortions. Doctors perform an estimated 50,000 underground abortions a year. Many physicians who are publicly anti-choice have chosen to administer abortions through their private practices and applaud the recent ruling against the liberalized law because they stand to increase their earnings if the procedure is illegal.
According to Ms. Nowicka, the 9-3 ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal invoked the language of the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child, the World Health Organization's definition of "health", and Poland's newfound democratic principles. The Tribunal made its decision three days before the Pope was to visit his native country.
"The protection of life from the moment of conception was deducted from the democratic state of law," Ms. Nowicka said. "The provision was supposed to be checked with the constitution of 1952, but the communist constitution had no provision to protect the life of the fetus."
"This ruling stated specifically that the difficult life situation of a mother is of a lower value than the life of the fetus and that the fetus is a child that must be protected at all costs," said Ms. Nowicka in New York. "It is obvious that the Tribunal went way beyond their role and entered into the role of Parliament to create law," Ms. Nowicka said, referring to the Tribunal's finding that a fetus has a right to health, and that these rights supersede the rights of the woman. Ms. Nowicka also warned that this use of international law to create a hierarchy of human life could be a precedent to other anti-choice rulings throughout the world.
In the face of what could be an overwhelming setback for the reproductive rights movement in Poland, Ms. Nowicka was hopeful that a coalition of feminist groups in Poland can stand up to the Roman Catholic Church. Ms. Nowicka's hope prevails despite Polish women's historical reluctance to speak out about abortion, sexuality or contraception.
At present, women in Poland have limited access to modern contraceptives and those that are available can be costly. Surgical sterilization --- both tubal ligations and vasectomies --- is illegal. IUDs and the pill are extremely costly and are available only through private doctors. "Physicians themselves," Ms. Nowicka said, "are often barriers to contraception." Medical personnel are often afraid that if they provide contraception, counseling or abortion in a public facility, they will be reported by a colleague and denounced by the church.
Sexuality and reproductive health education are virtually absent in most medical facilities and schools. Although the provision for sex education in schools in the 1996 liberalized abortion law was upheld by the Tribunal, in deference to the Church educators use a pro-family curriculum and abstain from teaching about sexuality or modern contraception.
"Reproductive health and rights were in poor shape when abortion was legal in Poland," Ms. Nowicka said. Now that abortion is once again entirely illegal, only wealthy Polish women will be able to afford abortions in private underground clinics. Others will seek abortions in neighboring Ukraine, Czech Republic, or Lithuania. Without access to a variety of affordable contraceptives or the legal option to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, Polish women, especially the poor, will be almost entirely without reproductive rights.
Polish women are not, however, without some political power. When many men were imprisoned during the struggle for democracy, women became leaders in the Solidarity Party. Today, women make up 13% of the Polish Senate and Parliament, and have their own women's cross-party parliamentary group. Still, Ms. Nowicka said, Polish women have yet to rally around feminist issues. Publicly, women have been strong supporters of abortion restrictions and ardent followers of the Roman Catholic Church.
"I hope that the realities of women's lives will make them more active," Ms. Nowicka said. In order to mobilize women, she envisions a multi-issue public education campaign that will ally abortion rights with other feminist issues such as equal rights, fair employment laws, sexual harassment and violence against women.
Background information from the World Population Foundation's April 1996 Newsletter
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