The bill would have removed the criminalization of helping to obtain an abortion. In 2021, the previous Polish government pushed through an almost complete ban on abortion.
The lower house of the Polish parliament on Friday rejected a bill that would have decriminalized helping to obtain an abortion.
The bill concerned, for example, persons who provide drugs necessary for abortion or doctors who perform abortions in the early stages of pregnancy or due to fetal deformities.
Reproductive rights and health care have come to power in Poland at the end of last year Donald Hardly at the top of the government’s agenda. The government has, among other things, restarted public financing of in vitro fertilization. It has also promised to facilitate the availability of birth control pills and to legalize abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and in cases where the fetus has been found to have malformations.
The previous government, led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, pushed through an almost complete abortion ban in 2021. According to the current law, abortion is only allowed if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, or if the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the pregnant woman.
In addition to the opposition national-conservative PiS party and the radical right-wing Confederacy freedom and independence party, almost half of the MPs from the governing Christian Democrats voted against the bill.
For supporters of abortion rights, the voting result was a setback.
– Doctors will still be afraid to perform abortions, and friends can be imprisoned for helping their friends. Women’s fear for their health and lives continues, deputy family minister Aleksandra Gajewska says community service in X.
The president known as an ally of the PiS party Andrzej Duda has vowed to use the president’s veto if the changes to the abortion law pass in parliament. Duda’s season lasts until the end of next year.
Source: Reuters