The Guardian reports:

When the first Russian bombs fell on Ukraine, Myroslava Marchenko was a gynaecologist at a private clinic in Kyiv. The next day, one of her patients was due to have an abortion after prenatal tests showed a high chance of Down’s syndrome.

Instead, like millions across the country, Marchenko and her patient fled to safety, crossing the border into Poland where abortions due to foetal abnormalities – or “on eugenic grounds” in the language of the country’s constitutional tribunal – are illegal.

“She called me and said, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t know what to do, because time is running out and my pregnancy is growing, but I don’t want to raise this child because it’s war, and I can’t manage it,’” Marchenko recalls. It was, she says, the first time that she understood the impact that Poland’s abortion laws, and the barriers that had been erected to prevent women accessing emergency contraception, could have on individual lives. Marchenko told her patient she should leave Poland and travel to the Czech Republic in order to access a safe termination.

More than 2 million Ukrainians have found refuge in Poland since the beginning of the war in February; the vast majority are women with children. While the two countries share history, culture and a border, women’s access to reproductive healthcare is radically different.

In Ukraine, abortions are legally provided on request in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, oral contraception is sold over the counter without prescription and the morning-after pill is readily available. In Poland, abortion is almost completely outlawed and access to contraception is ranked as the worst in Europe, according to the European Parliamentary Forum. Many doctors refuse to prescribe emergency contraception or even IUDs (intrauterine devices) on ethical grounds, arguing that they are akin to an abortion. [Continue reading…]