Polish Supreme Court acquits politician of offending religious feelings in church abortion protest

Poland’s Supreme Court has thrown out a case against a deputy government minister launched almost three years ago, when she was an opposition politician, over a protest she held in a church against the introduction of a near-total abortion ban.

She was accused of offending religious feelings and maliciously interfering with the public performance of a religious act, both crimes in Poland that each carry prison sentences of up to two years.

The politician in question, deputy culture minister Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, celebrated the end of the long-running case. But she also criticised the actions of prosecutors under the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government for pursuing charges against her.

The case against Scheuring-Wielgus, who hails from The Left (Lewica), one of the groups in the current ruling coalition, stems from her participation in a protest during the mass wave of demonstrations against the constitutional court ruling of October 2020 that introduced a near-total ban on abortion.

Scheuring-Wielgus and her husband, Piotr Wielgus, were among a group of protesters who entered a church in Toruń – the same one they had married in 17 years earlier – during Sunday mass and held up signs calling for abortion to be the decision of women rather than of “the state in support of Catholic ideology”.

In December 2021, the then prosecutor general, Zbigniew Ziobro, who was also justice minister, filed a request for Scheuring-Wielgus’s parliamentary immunity to be waived so she could face charges of offending religious feelings and maliciously interfering with the public performance of a religious act.

In November 2022, the then PiS-majority in parliament approved the request, paving the way for charges to be brought against Scheuring-Wielgus.

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In March 2023, the district court in Toruń dismissed the case, with the judge declaring that “the act of which [Scheuring-Wielgus] is accused does not contain the features of a prohibited act”, reported the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.

However, prosecutors then filed an appeal. But that has now been dismissed in the final instance by the Supreme Court, which found that there was no basis for a retrial and that there has been no malicious disruption of Holy Mass by Scheuring-Wielgus, reports the Rzeczpopolita daily.

“For four years I was dragged through prosecutors’ offices and courts for entering a church and standing up for women’s rights,” wrote Scheuring-Wielgus on Thursday after the Supreme Court’s decision was announced.

A group of 32 demonstrators who held a protest against Poland’s near-total abortion ban in a cathedral during Sunday mass have been acquitted of “maliciously interfering with a religious act”, a crime that carries a sentence of up to two years in prison https://t.co/w1YCnNWgK4

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) March 13, 2023

Last year, the politician claimed that prosecutors had pursued the case against her in order to create a “chilling effect” by “intimidating” people into not mounting such protests.

In October last year, the Supreme Court reached a different decision regarding her husband. In response to an appeal by prosecutors, it overturned a lower-court ruling acquitting him over the protest. As a result, he will now face trial again.

Scheuring-Wielgus is part of a new government that replaced PiS in office in December last year. It has promised to reverse the near-total abortion ban introduced under PiS. However, the various elements of the current ruling coalition disagree on what form the new abortion law should take.

Parliament has rejected a bill that would have softened Poland’s abortion laws after the most conservative party in Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition joined the right-wing opposition in voting against it https://t.co/pJplnHhtZn

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 12, 2024

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.