Polish high court protects babies with abnormalities

Aborting a baby because it has congenital defects amounts to eugenics, Polish judges said on Thursday. Only two of the 13 members of Poland’s Constitutional Court dissented from the ruling, which said allowing abortions because of fetal abnormalities is unconstitutional.

What do Polish laws say? The largely Catholic country has some of the strongest protections for unborn babies in Europe. A 1993 law allows women to abort only if the mother’s life is in danger, in cases of rape or other illegal acts, or if the baby has congenital defects. The case before the court challenged the last provision. Of the 1,110 babies legally aborted in Poland in 2019, most were due to medical abnormalities, according to the Ministry of Health.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Samantha Gobba’s report about when Poland considered protecting babies in all cases in 2016.