Poland’s government votes to ease abortion laws in challenge to conservative president

WARSAW — Poland’s lower chamber of parliament approved two bills that would loosen the country’s strict abortion restrictions Tuesday evening, marking a breakthrough for Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition nearly three years after it took power, promising to restore reproductive rights. The measures, which are likely to be vetoed by opposition-aligned President Karol Nawrocki, would end criminal penalties for helping a woman obtain an abortion and re-legalize terminations involving severe fetal abnormalities, undoing one of the crucial elements of Poland’s near-total abortion ban. “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,” Katarzyna Kotula, Poland’s government equality commissioner and a lawmaker from the Left, said on X. 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 the liberalization going this far. Both bills now move from the lower chamber, or the Sejm, to the Senate, where they seem 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. “By refusing to sign [the abortion] legislation, the president is hurting people,” Włodzimierz Czarzasty, speaker of the Sejm, said Tuesday before the votes. “If he wants to hurt women, he will hurt them. I think women will see that and hear that.” 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. Overriding a presidential veto requires a three-fifths majority in the Sejm that the Tusk-led coalition doesn’t have. The proposals that passed Tuesday 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. Overturning restrictions At the parliamentary level, ending criminal penalties for helping women with abortion passed with 217 votes in favor, 213 against and three abstentions. The other bill won a slightly clearer majority of 233 for, 203 against and a single abstention. The first bill would decriminalize assisting or encouraging an abortion performed outside legally permitted grounds, an offense which currently carries sentences of up to three years in prison. It 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. The second bill 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. It would also set deadlines for hospitals to provide lawful abortions and require written explanations for refusals. Women’s rights organizations were skeptical about the bills being 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,” Legalna Aborcja (Legal Abortion) NGO said 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 I voted for it and will always vote for every change, even the smallest one, that bri