Poland's restrictive laws on abortion are violating women's rights, a United Nations committee said Monday, saying the rules had contributed to "several preventable deaths".

Poland's laws, among the strictest in Europe, permit abortion only if the pregnancy is the result of sexual assault or incest, or if it poses a direct threat to the life or health of the mother.

In 2021, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) opened an inquiry into the laws. 

Its report concluded that Polish women "are facing severe human rights violations due to restrictive abortion laws".

Many were "forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, seek unsafe clandestine procedures, or travel abroad for legal abortions", it said.

"The situation in Poland constitutes gender-based violence against women and may rise to the level of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," the committee’s vice-chair Genoveva Tisheva said.

The CEDAW also denounced a law that makes aiding abortion punishable by up to three years' imprisonment, as "doctors frequently hesitate to perform abortions, even when legal, due to fears of criminal liability".

Other doctors decline to perform abortions for moral or religious reasons, the committee added, while complex bureaucracy and a powerful anti-abortion lobby likewise complicate access to safe termination. 

"Together, these factors create a complex, hostile and chilling environment in which access to safe abortion is stigmatised and practically impossible," Tisheva said.

Poland's governing coalition has pledged to liberalise its abortion laws.

But its last attempt to relax the legislation failed in July, when lawmakers narrowly rejected a bill to remove the provision banning abortion assistance by 218 votes to 215.