Poland's parliament passes two bills to ease abortion laws; conservative president threatens veto

Poland's lower chamber of parliament approved two bills on Tuesday evening that would loosen the country's strict abortion restrictions, marking a breakthrough for Prime Minister Donald Tusk's coalition nearly three years after it took power promising to restore reproductive rights.

The first bill would decriminalize assisting or encouraging an abortion — an offense that currently carries sentences of up to three years in prison. The second would restore the right to terminate a pregnancy when doctors identify a severe and irreversible fetal abnormality or an incurable illness threatening the fetus's viability, undoing one of the harshest elements of Poland's near-total abortion ban.

The first bill passed by 217 votes to 213, with three abstentions. The second won a slightly clearer majority of 233 to 203, with a single abstention. Both bills now move from the lower chamber, the Sejm, to the Senate, where they appear poised to pass.

But their eventual fate remains uncertain. President Karol Nawrocki, an ally of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, said before his election in 2025 that he would not sign legislation easing abortion rules. He is aligned with the party that triggered mass protests with its abortion clampdown five years ago.

Overriding a presidential veto requires a three-fifths majority in the Sejm that the Tusk-led coalition does not have, so a veto from Nawrocki would stall the bills. Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, speaker of the Sejm, said Tuesday before the votes: 'By refusing to sign the abortion legislation, the president is hurting people.'

Katarzyna Kotula, the government's equality commissioner and a lawmaker from the Left, wrote on X: 'The state trusts women. A woman who terminates her own pregnancy is already exempt from criminal punishment. It's time to stop punishing everyone who loves us, worries about us and respects our choices.'

Still, neither bill would allow abortion on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, as Tusk's Civic Coalition promised during the 2023 election campaign. The multi-party coalition includes many conservatives and lacks agreement on liberalization going that far.

The proposals had lingered in a parliamentary committee for two years before surfacing, spurred by the campaign heating up 12 months before the next general election, slated for late 2027.

Women's rights organizations were skeptical about calling the bills a breakthrough, saying the reforms fall far short of granting Polish women the access to abortion available in most of the EU, where pregnancies can generally be terminated on request during the first trimester.

'What does this mean for women who need abortions now? Nothing, because none of these projects would help them,' the NGO Legalna Aborcja (Legal Abortion) wrote on X.

Education Minister Barbara Nowacka, acknowledging the incremental nature of the change, said she believed women should be able to decide, unconditionally, whether and how many children they have — but she voted for the bills.

The bills would also protect doctors, nurses and midwives from prosecution when they terminate a pregnancy because of a threat to the woman's life or health or strong indications of a serious, irreversible fetal condition. They set deadlines for hospitals to provide lawful abortions and require written explanations for refusals.

Tusk's coalition government will likely keep turning up the heat on the president and PiS if Nawrocki blocks the liberalization, as he has said he would.