The text submitted to the vote on Friday was rejected with the votes of the nationalist-conservative party and the extreme right. Currently, in Poland, abortion is only authorized if the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest.
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The Polish Parliament rejected, on Friday, July 12, a bill aimed at decriminalizing and depenalizing all aid and assistance with abortion. Some 218 deputies voted against this project to liberalize the penal code, against 215 who supported it. Assisting an abortion therefore remains punishable by three years in prison in Poland, a country with a strong Catholic tradition, within which the right to abortion is a deeply divisive issue.
The text submitted to the vote on Friday was rejected with the votes of the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), the far-right Konfederacja, which are two major opposition parties, but also those of some deputies of the peasant party PSL (Christian Democrats), a member of the ruling coalition. The three other texts, still being debated in parliamentary committees, directly propose, but each following different modalities, access to abortion.
It is the first and most cautious of four draft laws aimed at liberalising access to abortion in Poland, submitted by members of the ruling pro-EU coalition, amid deep divisions over easing some of Europe’s most restrictive regulations. The alliance of pro-EU parties came to power in October promising to legalise abortion, which is currently only permitted if the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, or if it poses a direct threat to the mother’s life or health.
