The hopes for change that hundreds of thousands of women had placed in the liberal government in Poland have been dashed again on Friday. The Sejm, the lower house of parliament, has rejected the proposed law to decriminalise abortion, by 218 votes against and 215 in favour. The vote has revealed the division within the coalition government led by Donald Tusk, where the most conservative wing of one of the partners has rejected the proposal of the minority and progressive party of the Executive.
Legalising abortion on demand up to the 12th week, one of the major campaign promises of Tusk’s centre-right Civic Coalition (KO) and New Left, has little chance of seeing the light of day. The opposition of Third Way, a coalition formed by the Christian Democratic agrarian party PSL and the centre-right Polska 2050, makes it almost impossible for any proposal that goes beyond a slight revision of current legislation, which allows abortion only in cases of rape or if the mother’s life is in danger, to succeed.
Faced with the difficulty of reversing the situation promoted by the ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which governed until last December, New Left proposed at least decriminalizing assisted abortions. In Poland, a woman can terminate her pregnancy without being directly penalized for it, but anyone who assists her faces criminal charges. The legislative project rejected on Friday was an attempt to facilitate access to safe abortions, in the country with the most restrictive law in the EU after Malta.
Most PSL MPs, except four, sided with PiS and the far-right Confederation in the vote in the Sejm. Polska 2050, which rejects relaxing the abortion law, voted in favour, although it considered abstaining until the last moment.
The absence of 23 MPs also contributed to the failure of the bill, which was introduced in a watered-down version to win the support of the government’s most reactionary partners. Two abstentions were also recorded in the vote. Tusk, in a message on the social network X, shared his discontent with MPs in his ranks. “This was not an ordinary vote,” wrote the prime minister. “MPs Giertych and Slugocki will be suspended from the parliamentary group and deprived of their functions (vice-president of the group and deputy minister),” he added. Roman Giertych, a former minister of the ultra-right PiS, was one of Tusk’s most controversial recruits in the legislative elections last October. The prime minister is aware that in the regional and local elections this spring he lost support due to the disappointment of a part of the electorate, especially the youngest, with the lack of progress in this area.
Equality Minister Katarzyna Kotula, who was behind the law, also expressed her displeasure with her government partners on social media: “No, you cannot vote for the conservatives and expect liberalisation of the abortion law or other changes in the area of human rights.”
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Even if the vote had been approved, PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda had announced last week that he would exercise his veto power to prevent it from coming into force.
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