Polish President Vetoes Move To Restore Access To Emergency Contraception

Warsaw, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2024) Poland's conservative President Andrzej Duda on Friday vetoed a proposal to restore prescription-free emergency contraception which was reversed by the previous nationalist government.

Poland saw a rollback of women's reproductive rights during the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party's eight-year rule, with access tightened to emergency contraception, made prescription-only in 2017.

The pro-EU ruling coalition, in power since December, had pledged to ease those curbs and passed a bill to provide over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill for girls and women aged 15 and over.

A statement from the presidency on Friday said Duda had "decided to submit the amendment to the Pharmaceutical Law to parliament with a request to reconsider the act", vetoing the legislation.

Duda, a staunch ally of the PiS and a devout Catholic, "could not accept" the bill as it enabled access to the contraceptive pill "without medical supervision and bypassing the role and responsibility of parents", the statement said.

Anticipating the presidential veto, the government had already announced it would bypass this by allowing pharmacists to give prescriptions for the pill.

"We have prepared a regulation, I'm in contact with pharmacists... This pill will be available on a pharmaceutical prescription," Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna said on Wednesday.

"If we don't want women and young girls to get unwanted pregnancies, let's do everything to make the pill as accessible as possible," she told RMF FM radio.

The World Health Organization says on its website that emergency contraception should be "routinely included" within all national family planning programmes.