Just before Easter, an unborn 9-month-old baby boy was killed in Oleśnica in southwestern Poland by an injection of potassium chloride into his heart. He was due to be born any day, and he was protected by Polish law. The baby, named Felek by journalists, was aborted under illegal new guidelines released by the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The child was suspected of having a bone disease. The mother was offered alternatives, including delivering the child via cesarean section under full anesthesia.
“This child would have been born alive and capable of life,” Deputy Health Minister Urszula Demkow admitted on Polsat Television. “And so, according to Polish law, neonatologists would immediately proceed to save this child. So the only way to ensure it was not born alive was to administer a potassium chloride injection into the heart while the child was still in the womb … This is extremely difficult for me as a human, as a doctor, as a mother, and as a minister. Perhaps the mother could have chosen to give birth and put the child up for adoption.”
When asked if such abortion should be permitted in Poland, Demkow replied: “I don’t know. This is one of those moral questions that has no good answer.”
Donald Tusk’s illegal war on his nation’s pro-life laws is perhaps the most egregious example of the progressive approach to democracy and the rule of law. Democracy, to progressives like Tusk, is merely a means to an end, and bringing legal abortion to Poland is a fundamental aspect of his agenda. Olivier Bault, a journalist and communications director for Ordos Iuris Institute, a Polish think tank, has been tracking Tusk’s relentless assault on democratic norms.
“Tusk said last September that he is using the tools of ‘militant democracy’ and that he may sometimes act in ways that are not in accordance with the law,” Bault told me. “In fact, he and his government have taken many actions that violate both the law and the Constitution. This has led to accusations of a rampant coup, notably by the President of the Constitutional Tribunal, whose rulings the Tusk government neither publishes nor considers binding.”
Tusk campaigned on a promise to legalize abortion, assuring his supporters that his government would liberalize abortion laws within 100 days of being elected. Since taking office on December 13, 2023, he has repeatedly failed to do so—at least legally. After the Sejm, the lower house of Poland’s Parliament, rejected his proposed bill legalizing abortion on demand up until 12 weeks last July, Tusk turned to other tactics to get the job done.
“In September, Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna issued instructions to doctors in the form of guidelines, simultaneously threatening heavy financial penalties for doctors and hospitals that refuse to comply,” Bault said. “These guidelines have no legal status and therefore cannot impose an obligation on doctors to follow them. On the contrary, doctors who do not follow them risk civil, criminal, and disciplinary liability.”
“Meanwhile, Justice Minister Adam Bodnar, who unlawfully took control of the prosecution services by replacing the national prosecutor in January 2024 without the necessary approval of President Duda, issued guidelines in August 2024 instructing prosecutors not to prosecute illegal abortions and to prosecute doctors who refuse abortion requests from women.”
In short, Bault explained, having failed to pass new laws, Tusk has simply decided to ignore the current laws—and create penalties for those who seek to follow them.
Tusk stated as much. “We are looking for such ways of acting, in accordance with the law, that will allow access to legal abortion for women who, for various reasons, should have the right to this abortion,” he said after his bill failed. Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna concurred, stating: “A pregnant woman turning to a medical entity that has a contract with the National Health Fund with a medical referral that the pregnancy is a threat to her health, must receive the medical service of abortion in this entity.”
Under Tusk’s regime, hospitals that refuse to perform an abortion on a woman with a medical referral could be fined up to 500,000 zlotys (around $129,300) or lose their National Health Fund contracts. Instead of doctors being discouraged from committing abortions, the Tusk government is demanding that they perform them essentially on demand. The NGO Abortion Dream Team promptly took him at his word, setting up an illegal abortion center on Warsaw’s Wiejksa Street just opposite parliament near the headquarters of Tusk’s Civic Coalition.
