In a Chamber judgment handed down on Thursday 13 November, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously condemned Poland in a case where the applicant was forced to travel to the Netherlands to abort a foetus with Down’s syndrome.
This abortion was carried out between 22 October 2020 - the date on which the Polish Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the 1993 legal provisions allowing abortion in the event of foetal abnormality were unconstitutional - and 27 January 2021, the date on which the ruling was published.
In the view of the Strasbourg Court, the “situation of great uncertainty” that prevailed between the delivery and publication of the judgment - an uncertainty that was exacerbated by widespread demonstrations in the country - made it impossible to know when the change in rules would come into force, and this context was particularly problematic for the applicant.
There had therefore been a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to respect for private and family life), concluded the judges, who ordered Poland to pay the applicant €1,495 for material damage and €15,000 for non-material damage.
At the end of 2023, the European Court of Human Rights had already condemned Warsaw in a similar case.
Link to the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/jep (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)