Not their idea of Law and Justice IT TOOK Anna four weeks to make up her mind. A Catholic from Poland’s conservative south, she already has three children, the youngest just seven months old, and says she could not afford a fourth. Abortion is illegal in Poland except in cases of rape, severe prenatal defects or when the mother’s life is at risk, so Anna and her partner found a clinic in Germany. On a fairly typical day early this April, she was one of six Polish women who underwent abortions at the hospital in Prenzlau, a town north-east of Berlin.
Poland’s abortion restrictions are already among the tightest in Europe, but they may be about to get tighter. Pro-life organisations, backed by the Catholic church, have proposed legislation that would ban the procedure except to save the mother’s life, and lengthen the penalty for those administering it from two years in prison to five. If their draft law collects 100,000 signatures, Poland’s parliament will have to consider it.
The initiative jibes with the social conservatism of Poland’s new government, run by the populist Law and Justice party (PiS). Since…
