Polish ruling parties divided over abortion law

Poland’s ruling parties have presented separate bills to liberalise the country’s abortion laws, proposing to make abortion legal up to the 12th week of pregnancy, but some MPs remain sceptical.

Liberalising the abortion law was a promise made by some opposition parties during last year’s election campaign. However, once the parties were united in Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government, they found it difficult to forge a common position.

The most liberal position is held by the Left (S&D/Left), which submitted its draft law in November, days after the new parliament began operations. The Left’s draft includes a provision that would legalise abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy.

A similar draft was prepared by Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO, EPP/S&D) and submitted to the parliament on Thursday. But while the Left has more or less consolidated views on abortion, KO, which includes many Christian Democrats, is more divided on the issue.

“We are ready to submit a bill to the Sejm in the coming hours on legal and safe abortion up to the 12th week,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday.

The centrist Third Way Bloc is the most conservative among the parties within Tusk’s camp and the most sceptical when it comes to abortion.

One of its member parties, the centre-green Poland 2050 (Renew), is led by parliament Speaker Szymon Hołownia, a former Catholic activist and entertainment TV host, who, in his youth, wanted to join the Dominican Order but abandoned the novitiate twice.

Although many Third Way MPs are openly opposed to abortion, the bloc wants to put the decision in the hands of citizens. “The Third Way wants a referendum on abortion,” Hołownia told Rzeczpospolita in December.

No voting discipline

Although not everyone in the Third Way bloc, made up of Poland 2050 and the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL, EPP), is opposed to liberalising abortion laws, the bloc will be the most unconvinced about the more liberal draft bills.

Asked whether his party would support KO’s draft, PSL’s senior parliamentary speaker, former agriculture minister Marek Sawicki, said no decision had yet been taken on what they would do.

“In any case, I know that a large group of MPs will certainly not support this draft,” he told the Polish Press Agency (PAP), adding that he would vote against liberalising abortion.

“I do not intend to change my views under the current fashion,” he added. He believes most PSL lawmakers would do the same.

Previously, the former PiS (ECR) government had further restricted Poland’s already strict abortion law through a ruling by the government-controlled Constitutional Tribunal, stating that abortion is only possible in cases where the mother’s health is at serious risk or the pregnancy is the result of rape.

The 2020 ruling sparked massive protests on the streets of Polish cities and towns against the PiS and the Catholic Church, which approved the court’s decision to protect unborn children.

Before the 2020 ruling, Poland had a so-called abortion compromise reached in 1993, allowing for abortion only in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape, threat to the mother’s life and severe foetal damage.

(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)

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