Abortion in Poland: Peering into Pandora’s Box

Abstract

‘A nation that kills its own children is a nation without a future.’¹ With these words, Pope John Paul II laid down the gauntlet to Polish parliamentarians after they had approved a liberal amendment to three-year-old abortion restrictions. These developments in the 1990s occurred only after sustained and bitter conflict during a momentous political, social and economic transformation. Apart from ‘decommunization’, or the purging of those said to have collaborated with the overthrown regime, no other issue during this period opened up such a Pandora’s box as abortion. The Pontiff repeated his uncharacteristically harsh words during his seventh papal trip back to his homeland in June 1997, just days after the Constitutional Court had struck down key provisions of the newly liberalized abortion code and instructed parliament to review it within six months.