Polish Voters Have Rejected Abortion Liberalization at the Ballot Box Twice — Especially Young People

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The candidate supported last Sunday by all the Right for the second round of the Polish presidential election had promised that he would veto any law that liberalizes abortion. He won with 50.89% of the votes against the left-liberal candidate who had promised to ratify any law liberalizing abortion. It was, moreover, the progressive radicalism of Tusk’s candidate, Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, that allowed, for the first time since the fall of communism, a union of the Polish Right behind the conservative candidate remaining in the race, with the slogan “Anyone but Trzaskowski.”

“The pro-life candidate supported by the Christian democratic party Law and Justice (PiS), Karol Nawrocki, was notably supported for the second round by Sławomir Mentzen, the libertarian and conservative candidate of the Confederation (an alliance of conservative libertarians and Christian nationalists) as well as by Grzegorz Braun, the royalist candidate. Mentzen and Braun, like Nawrocki, are practicing Catholics openly hostile to the liberalization of abortion. In the first round, Nawrocki received more than 29% of the votes, closely following the pro-abortion mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski (just over 31%), and placing second ahead of Mentzen (nearly 15%) and Braun (more than 6%).

From the first round, the candidates hostile to a liberalization of abortion in Poland totaled more than 50% of the votes. And for the second round, the pro-life candidate Karol Nawrocki scored his best results (around 53-54% of the votes) in the age groups of 18 to 29 years and 30 to 39 years. While women voted for him less than men, they still chose the pro-life candidate for nearly 46% of them.

A constitution and laws protecting this fundamental right, which conditions all other rights: the right to life.

The Polish law allows abortion up to the 12^th week of pregnancy only if the pregnancy results from a criminal act (rape, incest...) and up to the 9^th month of pregnancy in case of health or life risks to the pregnant woman. If the law does not specify whether it is about physical or mental health, the case law of the Constitutional Court requires that the health risk be real and severe, and doctors, as well as Polish courts, have always interpreted this paragraph as applying to physical health only. Furthermore, if the pregnancy is advanced and the baby can be extracted from the mother’s womb without endangering her life, Polish law actually allows in this case to terminate the pregnancy, but not to kill the child.

In a 1997 ruling that invalidated an expansion of the grounds permitting abortion due to the socio-economic difficulties of the pregnant woman, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal explained that the right to life must be guaranteed from conception since there is no other subsequent moment in a person’s life that could be defined scientifically and objectively as the beginning of that person’s life. Further judgments from this court have subsequently reinforced this jurisprudence, including the 2020 ruling that caused a stir when Poland’s Constitutional Court banned abortions on the grounds of a disability or a serious and incurable illness of the child at the prenatal stage. That’s how the extermination of children affected by Down syndrome, for example, then became illegal in Poland. Previously, this eugenic practice was prevalent under the Polish law of 1993, which regulates and restricts abortion.

In Poland, abortion recalls the darkest hours of history

Historically, the first legalization of abortion in Poland was carried out by Nazi Germany during the occupation and it only concerned Polish and Jewish women. Abortion became illegal again after the war before being legalized by the communist dictatorial regime, and then prohibited again – or at least heavily restricted – starting in 1993, three years after the fall of communism.

The Catholic Church, very active in Poland, has always been strongly committed against this practice, and it is often discussed in sermons, something that priests and bishops in Western Europe would do well to take inspiration from. As the president of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, who was highly committed to the liberals in 2015-2016, explained during the conflict between liberals and conservatives which marked the beginning of Brussels’ interference in matters of the rule of law in Poland, “you can dress it up with whatever words you want, but abortion is always murder.”

This is how he explained to the left-leaning, liberal, and pro-abortion newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza the consistent stance of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal on abortion since the 1990s.

As a result, if Donald Tusk’s candidate had been elected president on Sunday and he had signed a law allowing abortion on demand up to the 12^th week, that law would have been unconstitutional. But it has to be said that Tusk’s government has not been publishing or enforcing the decisions of the Constitutional Court for more than a year, which the liberals in Warsaw and their Brussels supporters call “restoring the rule of law”...

No majority in the Polish parliament in favor of abortion on demand

Let us recall, however, that the Polish Sejm voted in July 2024, and therefore under the current parliamentary majority, against a bill legalizing abortion up to the 12^th week. Therefore, it is not even certain that with Trzaskowski as president, the left-liberal coalition of Donald Tusk would have found a majority in parliament to vote for a law that would liberalize abortion, disregarding constitutional law.

This is why the Health Minister of Donald Tusk issued a circular last September that claims to interpret Polish law (a power of interpretation that the government does not have) as authorizing abortion on the grounds of a risk to the mental health of the pregnant woman. Simultaneously, the government of Donald Tusk is blackmailing hospitals and other medical facilities by imposing heavy financial penalties on those who refuse to perform abortions based on a mere psychiatrist’s diagnosis, which one can even obtain online without ever meeting a doctor. The Ministry of Health also claims to prohibit doctors from challenging such a diagnosis with a second medical examination, which is completely contrary to Polish laws regarding medical practice as well as the ethical code of doctors.

In Donald Tusk’s Poland, abortions are performed up to the ninth month and prosecutors protect criminals.

Pro-abortion doctors have been taking advantage of the situation to shock Poland with, unfortunately, abortions performed in the ninth month of pregnancy (https://en.ordoiuris.pl/life-protection/criminal-abortion-9-month-old-baby-poland-when-abortion-doctors-hide-behind) under the pretext of a supposed risk to the mental health of the pregnant woman who would be forced to give birth to her baby. Despite interventions, among other actors, by our institute, the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, the public prosecutor refuses to act, as it also refuses to act against a center opened by the pro-abortion feminist group “Abortion Dream Team” (https://en.ordoiuris.pl/life-protection/abortion-clinic-warsaw-ordo-iuris-notifies-prosecutors-office??) almost opposite the Sejm, where abortion pills are distributed to women who wish to rid themselves of their child. In January 2024, Donald Tusk’s Minister of Justice replaced the national prosecutor without the approval of President Andrzej Duda, which is required by law. Since then, the public prosecutor’s office has come under the control of this government supported by Brussels, which claims the right not to comply with the law in order to allegedly “restore the rule of law” after eight years of conservative governments.

The election of Karol Nawrocki on Sunday, however, thwarts the plans of Tusk and his Brussels supporters as it will not be possible to vote on laws that would have provided a semblance of legal compliance to the illegal actions of this government, including in matters of abortion. Hence the panic in Donald Tusk’s camp, which is starting to realize that one day they will have to answer for these acts.

Young Polish voters overwhelmingly choose pro-life candidates.

And in terms of the right to life which is severely violated under the left-liberal regime of Donald Tusk, Polish voters have predominantly spoken in favor of this right twice, in the first and second rounds of the Polish presidential elections. And young voters did it even more predominantly than their elders.

In the 18-29 age group, Sławomir Mentzen even obtained nearly 35 per cent of the votes in the first round, placing him in the lead. Asked during the presidential campaign about the right to have an abortion after a rape, here is what this conservative libertarian answered: “I consider it to be savage. Innocent children should not be killed. Even if such an innocent child causes great trauma to someone.” And Grzegorz Braun, who came in fourth overall, is even firmer than Mentzen on the issue. This Member of the European Parliament was notably seen during the presidential campaign performing a “citizen’s arrest” on camera of the gynecologist Gizela Jagielska, who had publicly boasted just before Easter of having killed a child in its mother’s womb, by injecting poison into the heart. But instead of receiving help from the police and the arrest of the serial killer (Jagielska is not at her first prenatal child murder, and her posts on social networks as well as comments from former patients reveal a truly psychopathic attitude on her side), it is Braun who now faces prosecution by the public prosecutor – for kidnapping.

No matter what, these Polish elections show the gap that can exist today between European societies on the issue of fundamental values. The French, for example, would find it hard to realize how much the images of deputies and senators rejoicing after their vote to include abortion in the French constitution shocked and even caused nausea in many foreign countries, including Poland.

Olivier Bault
 

This piece was originally published in French on the Salon Beige website.

Olivier Bault is the Communications Director at the Ordo Iuris Institute.