ABSTRACT
This chapter contains an analysis of the latest decisions of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal regarding religious freedom against the background of earlier constitutional case law. Religious freedom has been the subject of four recent judgments: a judgment concerning the constitutionality of criminalizing the insult to religious feelings, a judgment on a doctor's right to conscientious objection to performing a medical procedure, and two judgments with arguably opposing outcomes in relation to ritual slaughter. The conscientious objection of doctors and their right to refuse to perform specific medical treatments, such as abortion, due to convictions of conscience have occasionally arisen in the jurisprudence of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal. In the case of ritual slaughter, there is a conflict between the right to freedom of religion and the duty of humane treatment of animals. Since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Jews in Polish lands have exercised the right to perform ritual slaughter.
