Disputes quite regularly break out in Poland over the issue of abortion. The Polish society recently carried on a heated discussion after the media publicized the case concerning the refusal to perform an abortion for a fourteen-year-old, who was impregnated as a result of a crime. In such a case Polish law permits an abortion to be performed during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. As usual Poles were divided over this issue. (27-JUN-08)
Written by Agnieszka Chmielecka/ HRH Warsaw
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A fourteen-year-old, being a minor, has the right to a legal abortion. According to Polish law, this requires a certificate issued by the prosecutor’s office, as well as a unanimous declaration from the legal guardian and the pregnant girl. Such declarations were also submitted. However, two hospitals – in Lublin and Warsaw – refused to perform the abortion. At the first institution doctors called upon the conscience clause and at the second one they abandoned the medical procedure after receiving information that the girl was referred to an emergency shelter for children (the court made this ruling after it launched proceedings to deprive her parents of their parental rights in an aim to restrain the family from contacting the girl, as according to the police, the girl’s family supposedly tried to talk her into having an abortion). The Act on human embryo protection and conditions of permissibility of abortion obliges all persons conducting actions connected with the performance of an abortion to maintain absolute secrecy. In this case the issue pretty much played out in front of everyone in Poland. The Justice Minister, who also spoke out on this issue, even stated that the opponents and supporters of the right to an abortion treat the case of this fourteen-year-old as a battle that needs to be won. He added that finding a hospital, at which such a medical procedure could be performed, Was the Health Ministry’s problem. The abortion was ultimately performed during the 11th week of the girl’s pregnancy and the District Court in Lublin quashed the ruling to place the girl in the emergency shelter for children.
HFHR: Just like in the case of Alicja Tysiac
In a letter to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights emphasized that the 14-year-old’s situation is the direct effect of not enforcing the verdict of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Alicja Tysiac. The Court indicated to Poland that it is necessary “to establish a procedure for appealing decisions of doctors, who refuse to express consent for an abortion procedure”. (The Lublin hospital refused the girl the right to a legal abortion and at the same time did not refer her to another institution that would perform the procedure, although the law requires this.) According to the HFHR, in this case there is also cause for concern due to the violation of the girl’s right to privacy as a result of disclosing her personal data (they were presented on the forum of the right-wing magazine “Fronda”) and disturbing her stay at public hospitals. “In a democratic state of law there cannot be a situation where implicitly binding legal regulations are ignored by organs applying the law – in this case by public hospitals.”
