WARSAW, Poland, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- Facing a strict pregnancy law at home, many Polish women travel to Western European countries to have abortions, Polish Radio said Tuesday.

Wanda Nowicka, head of the Polish Association for Women and Family Planning, said several thousand Polish women travel abroad every year, most of them to Britain and the Netherlands, to have abortions.

Laura Riley, an activist of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, backed up the Polish claim, saying an increasing number of women were coming to British clinics for abortions, the Zycie Warszawy daily reported.

It was not known whether these women were all visitors from Poland or some of them were living and working in Britain.

More than 500,000 Poles have left the country and settled in Britain since Poland joined the European Union in 2004.

Abortion was mostly banned in Poland in 1997 and allowed only if a woman was raped or pregnancy constituted a danger to her health.