Abortion in Poland: Poland's parliament liberalizes abortion law

For the left in Poland's government, the vote to liberalize abortion laws was a matter of being or not being. In 2023 she took up the cause of abolishing the almost total ban on abortion in Poland. In doing so, she won the election with millions of women's votes, both for herself and for the liberal-conservative Citizens' Coalition (KO) of today's Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

On Tuesday evening, 233 MPs finally voted to allow abortion if doctors diagnosed a serious and irreparable malformation or life-threatening illness in the fetus. This regulation was already in effect until the end of 2020, but was repealed and declared invalid by the constitutional judges, some of whom were unlawfully appointed.

203 MPs voted against it on Tuesday. The second bill passed by MPs aims to decriminalize family members, friends and acquaintances who assist in an abortion. So far, they can be punished with up to three years in prison for obtaining addresses and appointments at counseling centers, for ordering abortion pills or for traveling to abortion clinics abroad.

The pregnant women themselves do not have to answer in court. Currently, abortion is only legal in Poland if rape can be proven under criminal law, the health of the expectant mother is in danger or there is a case of incest.

The two draft laws will now be discussed and most likely approved by the second chamber of the Polish Parliament, the Senate. They then end up on the desk of the right-wing nationalist President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki. He has already announced several times that he wants to veto any loosening of abortion laws.

This would make the desire of young Polish women to have a fear-free pregnancy a long way off. Expectant mothers with a high-risk pregnancy would have to travel abroad - as has been the case for the past six years - and receive medical care there. Or they would have to expect to die in the event of complications.

Poland's largest women's organization, "Women's Strike", repeatedly draws attention to the comparatively high mortality rate among pregnant women in Poland, who could have been saved by a timely abortion. The joy over the draft laws passed by the Sejm, which would restore the status quo ante in 2020, is therefore limited.

Many women accuse the center-left government of waiting too long to introduce this legislative initiative. The three-month deadline solution, which would have given Polish women back self-determination over their bodies, according to critics, was not even discussed. This deadline solution is standard in almost all of Europe, except in Poland and Malta, the states with the strictest abortion regulations in Europe.

The fact that around half of the MPs from the conservative farmers' party PSL voted to restore the status from 2020 on Tuesday evening can hardly assuage the anger of many Polish women. Because the PSL has been a brake on social reforms from the start.

In 2024, she even forced Donald Tusk to publicly admit that he would not be able to keep the election promises he had made to millions of Polish women. Many consider the fact that the abortion laws have now been voted on in the Sejm to be the beginning of the election campaign. The next parliamentary elections in Poland will take place in 2027. Without the votes of many women, the center-left government's chances of being re-elected are slim.