Polish Sejm intends to soften abortion laws

Poland’s parliament voted on Friday to begin work on relaxing abortion laws. Sejm developed four options for amendments to the law. They will be presented to a special parliamentary commission for consideration.

Two of these documents propose to allow artificial termination of pregnancy at the request of a woman up to 12 weeks, as in most European countries. The third is to decriminalize the abortion procedure. Fourth, allow the pregnancy to be terminated if incurable deformities and malformations are discovered in the fetus. Polish women lost this right with another tightening of abortion legislation in 2020.

It is still unclear how long it will take to discuss the amendments in the parliamentary commission. Reuters notes, that even if the commission approves them, the bill could very likely be blocked by current President Andrzej Duda, using the veto power, whose PiS party supported tightening laws in this area. In this case, further attempts to soften the law could be made under the next president, if he holds less conservative views. The next presidential elections in Poland will be held in the summer of 2025.

• Poland’s abortion laws are currently among the harshest in the world. Termination of pregnancy at the request of a woman is not permitted. Until 2020, legal abortion was possible only in three situations: if the pregnancy was the result of rape, if the continuation of the pregnancy threatens the woman’s life, and if the fetus has incurable developmental defects. In 2020, the Constitutional Court removed the latter reason from the law.
• In 2022, only 161 induced abortion procedures were performed in medical institutions in Poland. The result of a practical ban on abortion is the growth of “abortion tourism” to other countries and clandestine abortions, which pose a risk to the life and health of women. In addition, Polish doctors, even if there are legal indications for abortion, are often afraid that they will be accused of a crime, which has already led to the death of women several times. These cases caused mass protests in Poland.
• Women’s rights groups indicate that the current number of abortions among Polish women, carried out either underground or in other countries, reaches 80-120 thousand.