Anti-abortion groups have held marches across Poland in support of calls for a near-total ban on terminations in the staunchly Catholic country, where abortions are already heavily restricted. [...]
However, an opinion poll published in March found that, far from supporting further restrictions, 51% of Poles want wider access to abortions. Thousands of people have attended protests against the proposed tightening of the law, with opponents launching their own plan to garner 100,000 signatures supporting a bill liberalising abortion.
Three former Polish first ladies have denounced the citizen’s bill, insisting that making it harder to access abortions would only “aggravate women’s tragedy”.
Fewer than 2,000 legal abortions take place in Poland each year. There are no official statistics on the number of illegal abortions performed, or on the number of women who travel abroad for the procedure to countries including Austria, Germany and Slovakia, which women’s rights organisations estimate to be between 100,000 and 150,000 a year.
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