BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Polish Culture Abortion In Poland

Abortion in the US is always a controversial subject. Which is why i think the abortion situation in Poland is a fasinating one because a short while ago they had a liberal abortion law. Now since a new democracy, they changed to a strict one.
But we read very little in the western press how this changed abortion law has worked. What little i read about is that a great deal of abortions still take place by performing abortions on Polish woman in neighboring countries and their abortion clinics.
Also i guess that doctors in Poland still perform underground abortion for a very high fee.
I have no agenda with this question as i find it one of the most difficult of human struggles. I can understand both sides. However, can anyone shed some light on the abortion question taking place in Poland right now, and more importantly, how it has affected the Polish populace?

Not sure about the situation at the moment, but i was out there when that ship was there - was it a doctor from netherlands? Although I assumed they had always been strict on the subject

I would have thought that if they made it legal then there wouldn't be so many underground operations going on.
I understand the sensitivity of the subject but the fact is that regardless of it's legality in Poland unfortunately someone would want to consider it.
Maybe I am of a generation that has accepted it as almost common place. We know that it happens so we don't really pay attention to it.
That doesn't answer the question but i'm not sure if you can?

Mason,

I think you are confusing the sutuation in Poland and in Russia. In Russia abortion is used as a birth control in Poland it is not.

Abortion in Poland is illegal indeed and it spite of that there are less and less kids being born, young people are waiting longer to create a family, but they do not use abortion as a birth control.

I am not sure, maybe some doctors perform illegal abortions but if they do - they may be punished by law.

Hi!
Abortion in Poland is illegal. But the fact is, that in private ginecologist gabinets there is no problem in having an abortion. The newspapers are full of their adds.

Abortion in Poland is legal in case of rape and incest pregnancies. But some doctors are so strict that they refuse doing it even in these cases. So a woman is forced to go to private doctor and pay a lot of money..

The next thing is, that there are doctors, that refuse abortion (even rape and incest abortion) in public hospitals, but they do this in their private gabinets..

I probably wasn't clear on my original posting. I realize abortion is illeagal ( with the exception of rape or incest )and was not being used as birth control. , My point was is that people in the US wonder what would happen if abortion here would become restricted as has happened in Poland, and was wondering what the effects were.

Mason,

one of the side effects of restricting abortions are the "tourist trips" of Polish women to Lithuania and other countries where abortion is performed cheaper to anybody who can pay something

Is it really that bad that many gabinets do private abortions and nobody really cares?

Jag) When you 40 years of abortion on demand, and then you turn offf the faucet so to speak, woman are going to find ways to get their abortions. Nothing shocking about it.

In the former USSR, abortion was considered a form of liberation for women, who were allowed to take full control over their reproduction, and it would be their choice whether or not to have a baby. The United States, by contrast, is still nowhere near ready to accept such a liberal policy. Today in Russia, abortion is still legal, accessible, and remains the primary form of birth control. Most women can be assumed to have an average of between 3 and 7 abortions in their life.

Poland, especially today, is a heavily religious country, and so it does not surprise me that abortion (like birth control in general) is strictly frowned upon.