Polish Police Stop Irish Woman's Abortion

So it seems like Britain isn't the only place to be chosen by Irish women who want an abortion procedure. News outlets in Warsaw reported that police raided a house yesterday where an Irish woman was undergoing an abortion. She was detained for an undisclosed period of time with a male companion before being brought to a local hospital for the medical procedure to be completed. Poland has some of the strictest laws on abortion in the E.U. A woman is only permitted to have it legally performed in the event that her life is at risk, if the pregnancy is the result of rape/incest, or if the child has a severe handicpa and little chance of survival.

In theory, abortion is legal in Ireland if there is a risk to the life of the woman though no political party has risked legislating for it. The Medical Council of Ireland considers abortion as malpractice, therefore Irish women have traditionally travelled to Britian to procure the services legislated for there since the 1967 Abortion Act. Estimates vary about how many have travelled over the past 40 years, the official figure being 45,000. Pro-choice groups alledge that anything up to 10,000 Irish women travel to Britain annually for legal abortions.

As regards this recent situation to transpire in Warsaw it is still not clear as to whether the woman has been a long-term resident in the city or whether she travelled especially from Ireland for the procedure. The latter would seem somewhat unusual given that abortion is illegal under normal circumstances in Poland. Yet an abortion costs £350 in Britain if conducted by the Maria Stopes Foundation and this does not include flights, accomodation, etc. Is it possible that Irish women are now making avail of cheap flights to Poland and low cost backstreet abortion clinics to avoid the steeper costs of a legal procedure in Britain?

Or maybe this is just a once off scenario - it certainly seems without precedent, and the fact that police had information that the procedure was taking place would seem to infer that the property where it was been conducted was a suspected illegal clinic. One way or the other, it seems a desperately unsafe procedure to be conducted away from proper hospital conditions and until such time as more information comes out we would be best to reserve judgement.