The Author, Shelal Lodhi Rajput, is a 2nd year, BBA LL. B (Hons.), Student at Symbiosis Law School, Pune, India.
In a recent and shocking development from one the developed countries of Europe, Poland’s Constitutional tribunal has ruled that abortion due to foetal defects will now be unconstitutional. Banning the most common of a few legal grounds for pregnancy termination in the predominantly catholic country. Chief Justice, Julia Przylebska, said in a ruling that existing legislation that allowed abortion of malformed fetuses was ‘incompatible; with the constitution.
After this law comes into effect a woman only can abort in case of rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s health and life, which make up only around 2% of legal terminations conducted in recent years in country. Abortions carried out when the foetus is malformed, which accounted for 98% of legal terminations last year, have now been outlawed. The ruling bans virtually all termination procedures taking place in the country. It could force women to carry a child even if they know the baby will not survive childbirth, it is a sheer violation of human rights as pointed out by women groups soon after the verdict delivered by court. The Court argued that terminating pregnancy due to defects of foetus amounts to eugenics this is a 19th century notion of genetic selection of breeding out of diseases. The verdict was given by 13 Judges, in which two judges did not backed the view of majority.
There is not an iota of doubt that this development drew the attention of whole world due to its nature, as the verdict drew from the country’s top court, which is final and cannot be appealed , drew immediate condemnation and dismay from the Council of Europe Commission of Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic called it “a sad day for #WomensRights”. Many women’s group opposed the verdict of country’s top court and as a result the Protests spread across the country.
Since 1993, the ruling marked the first change to Polish abortion law which comes after a years long effort from the country’s right wing government to curtail access to terminations. Poland has already had some of the EU’s strictest abortion laws. Now the court ruling provides a way for legislators from the governing right-wing law and Justice party to approve the draft legislation that would ban pregnancy and terminations in the case of foetus with congenital birth defects.
Pro-life activists and far right leaders have welcomed ruling, they argued that this law will ensure protection to the unborn sick children and ruling does not threaten women’s life and safety
Curbing access to abortion was a long-standing goal of the party, but in the face of intense public opposition, it retreated from prior policy initiatives.
Critics claim that the Constitutional Tribunal could have acted on behalf of the group. Although the Tribunal is nominally autonomous, most of its judges have been selected by PiS. The party denies that it is trying to influence the court.
Conservative values have played a growing role in public life in Poland since the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) came into power five years ago on a promise to defend what it sees as the nation's traditional, Catholic character.
The decision of court is violating the basic rights of a woman and it is a clear violation of Human Rights also. As per the reports, it is a ruling that comes when the legal challenge was launched by MPs from the governing nationalist PiS last year and the catch 22 here is that a majority of the court’s judges were nominated by the same party. Once again there is a prominent issue came Infront of us that is politicization of courts. As just after ruling the opponents say the Constitutional Tribunal may have acted on the ruling party’s behalf. While the Tribunal is nominally independent as most of its judges have been nominated by ruling party.
PiS denies trying to influence the court or taking advantage of the pandemic to push through the changes. Its justice reforms which included the Tribunal have attracted wide international accusations of undermining democratic norms.
Earlier also An attempt by the PiS government to tighten the abortion law in 2016 was scrapped following nationwide protests by tens of thousands of women dressed in black.
