However research indicates that banning abortion does not stop the practice – it simply forces women to turn to more dangerous methods.

According to the World Health Organization, about 22 million unsafe abortions are performed every year – and, even under their current laws, Poland sees far more illegal abortions than legal ones, with between 10,000 and 150,000, compared to about 1,000 or 2,000 legal terminations.

“Liberal abortion laws tend to be found in countries with better sex education and better access to contraception, so it makes perfect sense for those countries also to have lower abortion rates than countries without those things,” Dr Sally Sheldon, a law professor at Kent Law School specializing in gender, told Broadly in January 2016.

#BlackMonday: Hundreds of thousands of women strike against Polish abortion ban