Protesters marching against draconian new abortion law in Poland have been pepper sprayed as they clashed with riot police.

Dramatic footage shows tensions boiling in Warsaw as demonstrators marched in outrage at the move to ban abortion due to foetal defects.

Protesters can be heard screaming as police sprayed the irritant in their faces, after Poland axed one of the remaining legal grounds to terminate pregnancies.

After the ruling comes into effect, abortion will only be permissible in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the mother's health and life.

Police scuffle with protesters in Warsaw (
Image:
REUTERS)

Such cases make up only about 2% of legal terminations conducted in recent years.

The Constitutional Tribunal ruled on Thursday that ending the life of a deformed foetus is unconstitutional.

The move has been criticised as a blow to women's rights in the primarily Catholic country, as advocates warn it will usher in a tide of poverty and deaths in childbirth.

Crowds defied coronavirus lockdowns to protest from Warsaw to Krakow, Lodz and Szczecin.

Warsaw Police said on Twitter that it reacted with pepper spray and physical force after protesters threw stones and tried to push
through the police line.

Women in Warsaw wear Handmaid's Tale costumes in protest at the law change (
Image:
Marta Bogdanowicz/East News/REX/Shutterstock)

Hundreds of demonstrators had marched toward the house of governing party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski in the city on Thursday night after the ruling.

Some carried candles and signs that read "torture".

Others were decked out in Handmaid's Tale costumes in reference to the women forced to bear children in] Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel and the hit drama series of the same name.

Police scuffle with demonstrators near the house of Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski (
Image:
REUTERS)

The scarlet costumes worn by characters in the fictional Gilead have become a global protest symbol of women's rights to assert control over their own bodies.

Abortion rights activists say access to the procedure was often declined in recent years in Poland even in cases when it would be legal.

Many doctors in Poland, which already had some of the strictest abortion rules in Europe, exercise their legal right to refuse to terminate pregnancies on religious grounds.

A protester carries a sign reading 'torture' (
Image:
AFP via Getty Images)

A group of right-wing lawmakers asked the Tribunal in December to rule on the legality of aborting when there is serious, irreversible damage to the foetus.

The development pushes Poland further away from the European mainstream, as the only EU country apart from Malta to severely restrict access to abortion.

Maria Kurowska, a lawmaker with United Poland, a party in the ruling coalition with Law and Justice said: "We are glad with what the Constitutional Tribunal ruled because one cannot kill a child for being sick. This is not a foetus, it is a child."

Protesters wore masks as they marched amid Poland's coronavirus lockdowns (
Image:
via REUTERS)

Women's rights and opposition groups reacted to the ruling with dismay.

It is estimated that about 100,000 women already seek a termination abroad each year to get around Poland's tightening abortion restrictions, the BBC reports.

"The worst-case scenario that could have come true has come true. It is a devastating sentence that will destroy the lives of many women and many families," Kamila Ferenc, a lawyer with an NGO helping women denied abortion, told the Reuters news agency.

Demonstrators protest in 'The Handmaid's Revolt' near police lines in Warsaw (
Image:
Marta Bogdanowicz/East News/REX/Shutterstock)

"It will especially force the poor to give birth to children against their will.

"Either they have no chance of surviving, or they have no chance of an independent existence, or they will die shortly after giving birth."

The Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights Dunja Mijatovic wrote on Twitter of the court's decision: "Removing the basis for almost all legal abortions in Poland amounts to a ban and violates human rights."