“The president did not take advantage of the opportunity to side with women. We are implementing plan B,” said Polish Prime Minister and former President of the European Council Donald Tusk on Friday March 29. A little earlier, the conservative president, Andrzej Duda, announced that he would veto the law aimed at liberalizing access to the morning-after pill.
Voted in February in Parliament by 244 votes to 196, the text provides for access without prescription to the morning-after pill, “from the age of 15”. Because since 2017, it has only been accessible in Poland on medical prescription, a decision taken at the time by the government of the PiS party, a conservative and eurosceptic political party. According to a 2018 report from the International Federation for Human Rights, “this regressive legislation has a dissuasive effect on women and girls, who may be forced to continue their pregnancies or resort to clandestine and dangerous abortions.” Reopening this access was an electoral promise of the pro-European Union (EU) coalition led by Donald Tusk, in government since the parliamentary elections of December 2023.
But President Andrzej Duda, an ally of PiS and an avowed Catholic, decided to “return the amendment to the law on pharmaceutical products to Parliament asking it to re-examine the law (veto)”, indicated Friday a press release from the presidency. The head of state justified his refusal by respecting “standards for protecting children’s health”. It “cannot accept legal solutions allowing children under the age of 18 to have access to contraceptive medications without medical supervision and without taking into account the role and responsibility of parents,” the press release specifies. Andrzej Duda, however, “declared himself open to the solutions envisaged by the law in question, with regard to adult women”.
“Plan B” launched to circumvent the veto
In the process, the pro-European Polish government announced that it was launching its “plan B” to circumvent this veto. The goal is to authorize pharmacists to issue prescriptions for the pill. “We are in the final stage to agree details with pharmacists and the Supreme Pharmaceutical Chamber. The morning after pill will be available as a pharmaceutical service from May 1,” said the Ministry of Health. “The morning after pill will be available regardless of the president’s opinion on the issue, which bases his decision on superstition rather than medical knowledge,” added Equality Minister Katarzyna Kotula.
For his colleague in Education, Barbara Nowacka, Andrzej Duda “neither surprised nor disappointed” because, according to her, “he has declared himself against women for a long time”. One year before the next presidential election in Poland, she hoped that never again would a president “hide behind an ideology or faith so as not to place himself clearly on the side of the rights, health and safety of girls and women”.
Rights decline for eight years
This very political confrontation is playing out as Poland experienced a decline in women’s reproductive rights during the eight years of government of the populist nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party. Under current law, abortion is only legal if the pregnancy results from rape or incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger – a new restriction introduced in October 2020 banning abortion in cases of fetal malformation. The penalty for attempting an abortion or assisting in an abortion is three years in prison. This makes it one of the most restrictive countries in Europe, according to the NGO Center for Reproductive Rights.
Four bills aimed at liberalizing abortion have already been submitted to Parliament, but work has not started. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), emergency contraception should be “systematically included” in all national family planning programs.