Poland is seeing a rise in legal abortions, almost exclusively those carried out on psychiatric grounds, according to the Polish daily „Rzeczpospolita.”
Legal abortions in Poland are increasing as psychiatric indications have become the main legal basis for terminating pregnancies, reports the Polish daily „Rzeczpospolita”Photo: Colin Lloyd/Unsplash.com/CC0
The newspaper’s latest findings, based on data from the National Health Fund (NFZ), show that Polish medical facilities performed 627 pregnancy terminations between January and the end of September 2025, bringing the total close to levels seen before October 2020.
That month, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal struck down the so-called embryopathological exception, which had allowed abortions in cases of severe and irreversible fetal abnormalities.
The ruling removed one of the main legal grounds for terminating a pregnancy and further tightened an already restrictive abortion framework.
As a result, psychiatric indications have increasingly replaced the former exception and have become the dominant legal basis for abortion in Poland.
Psychiatric risk fills the legal gap
Medical experts cited by Rzeczpospolita say the 2020 court ruling effectively removed the primary legal pathway for abortion by eliminating the embryopathological ground, which had accounted for up to 98% of procedures before the ban.
In response, doctors and health authorities have increasingly interpreted the existing provision on threats to a woman’s health to include mental health, allowing terminations when pregnancy poses a serious psychiatric risk confirmed by a specialist.
This interpretation was formally reinforced by health ministry guidelines in 2024 and later by Poland’s psychiatric and gynaecological associations, which argue that the approach is both medically justified and legally necessary in the absence of broader legislative reform.
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Source: Rp.pl/X/@rzeczpospolita
Radio Poland