The Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, plans to present to Parliament this Thursday a bill to liberalize abortion, one of his electoral promises in the elections on October 15, although within his own heterogeneous coalition of Government – ??which includes everything from liberal centrists to leftists and Christian Democrats – there are different opinions on the matter. Yes, they all agree on the need to reverse the very restrictive legislation on abortion implemented in Poland during the eight years of the previous ultra-conservative Government of the Law and Justice party (PiS).
“We are ready to present in the next few hours a bill to Parliament on legal and safe abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw on Wednesday afternoon, the day the Executive approved another bill. law that opens free access to the morning after pill. This contraceptive procedure that prevents the fertilization of the egg – not to be confused with the abortion pill – had been strictly limited by the previous Government.
The date for the Sejm (lower house of the Polish Parliament) to debate and vote on the two texts has not yet been set, and in any case they face a difficult journey, especially regarding abortion, because it is not clear whether they will obtain enough support to its approval by the hemicycle. And if they are, the laws could later be vetoed by the president, Andrzej Duda, originally from the PiS party, and in recent weeks he has already hindered or objected to initiatives by the Tusk Government.
Women’s associations have called on deputies to act quickly. “We are aware that the legislative path to implement the social demand for legal, safe and free abortion has only just begun,” said Agnieszka Czerederecka, from the NGO Women’s Strike.
In Poland, a country with a strong Catholic tradition, abortion is only authorized in cases of rape or incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger. In October 2020, the Constitutional Court supported the PiS Government by declaring illegal abortions performed due to irreversible malformation of the fetus. This modification caused massive protest demonstrations for months, because then deaths of women with problematic pregnancies occurred in hospitals.
In some of these cases, doctors, out of personal convictions or fear of breaking the law, delayed abortions that could have saved the lives of these women. According to feminist organizations, around one hundred thousand women obtain abortions using the abortion pill, prohibited in Poland, or by traveling abroad to do so.
Tusk’s government coalition agrees on the morning-after pill, which wants it to be freely accessible from the age of 15, and below that age, with a doctor’s prescription. But with abortion there are different sensitivities within the Executive. The leftist Lewica party has already presented two legislative proposals in its own name, one for the decriminalization of abortion assistance and another for the liberalization of abortion.
The Christian Democrat member Third Way proposes a return to the old 1993 law, which allowed abortion in very limited but broader cases than current legislation. Furthermore, since he came to power last December, the new Tusk Government has reestablished public financing for in vitro fertilization.