On 22 October 2020, the Polish Constitutional Court declared that women’s right to abortion due to severe foetal impairment is unconstitutional, effectively banning abortion in the country (see EUROPE 12585/17).
To show its support for Polish women, the European Parliament organised a new debate on the subject on Wednesday 20 October and invited Polish activists committed to the defence of women’s rights to Strasbourg.
All this in a particularly tense context between the EU and Poland, whose Constitutional Court questioned the primacy of EU law over national law at the beginning of October (see EUROPE 12816/2).
What struck Polish activists and several MEPs was the lack of connection between this abortion ban and the continuing deterioration of the Rule of law in Poland.
“These days all eyes are on Poland because of the Constitutional Court and already one year ago this politically controlled illegitimate Court ruled that abortion should be nearly ban. So women’s right in this case has everything to do with the Rule of Law. I think it is time that this House recognises that”, insisted Swedish MEP Malin Björk, coordinator of The Left, in plenary.
“Our debate today and the one yesterday [with the Polish Prime Minister] are linked”, said Renew Europe coordinator Karen Melchior (Denmark).
At a press conference, the co-founder of the Polish movement Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet, Marta Lempart, said she was surprised to see no reference to the abortion ban in the motion for a resolution on the Rule of law in Poland to be voted on by the plenary on Friday (see other news). An amendment stressing the illegitimacy of the ban has meanwhile been voted on.
Marta Lempart herself has been repeatedly threatened for leading protests in favour of legal abortion in Poland and is now under police protection.
“There would be no ban on abortion if the Rule of law was respected in Poland, if the judiciary was independent”, she said, claiming that “a link must be openly established” between these realities.
Activists at the conference talked about Polish women’s distress and the threefold increase in consultations by family planning organisations after the Court judgment.
Denouncing the “torture” imposed on some women, they in turn assured that this “would not have been possible without a huge crisis in the Rule of law”, and they said they regretted the European Commission’s inaction.
On this point, the S&D and the Greens/EFA regretted that the institution “hides behind the argument of national competence”.
An argument that was indeed repeated on Wednesday by the Commissioner for Equality. On Tuesday, the President of the European Commission set out the means her institution was prepared to deploy to ensure respect for the Rule of law in Poland (see EUROPE 12815/3). However, she did not refer once to the issue of abortion. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)