POLAND COURT TRIES GYNAECOLOGIST OVER ABORTION ASSISTANCE

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A Polish gynaecologist went on trial on Thursday on charges of assisting abortion that could see her jailed for three years despite efforts by the current government to loosen restrictions.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition has pledged to liberalise Poland’s abortion law, among Europe’s most stringent, but has failed to garner enough support in the parliament.

The trial of gynaecologist Maria Kubisa, accused of distributing abortion pills to her patients — a charge she has denied, got underway Thursday in the northwest city of Szczecin.

“The trial has begun. The proceedings are closed to the public,” the Szczecin court’s spokesman Michal Tomala told AFP.

Kubisa practises in both Szczecin and Prenzlau, a German town some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Polish-German border, where she has been legally performing abortions.

Her case was publicised after Polish special services raided her private practice in Szczecin in January 2023, seizing medical records of up to 6,000 patients.

That drew condemnation from women’s rights groups who decried the search as violating the patients’ rights and doctor-patient confidentiality.

In November, the prosecutor’s office pressed “five charges of assisting a pregnant woman to terminate a pregnancy” against Kubisa, an act punishable by up to three years in prison.

“The terror against women continues,” Kubisa told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, commenting on the charges.

Abortion has become a political battleground in Poland where in October 2020 its highest court sided with the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) then in power and introduced a near-total ban on the procedure.

Currently, women can only get an abortion in the hospital if the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest or poses a direct threat to the life or health of the mother.

No law penalises them if they carry out their own abortion, for instance with pills ordered online.

AFP