Liberals and feminists in Poland were dealt a setback on Friday, July 12, when the Polish parliament refused to decriminalize abortion assistance. The left-wing bill relaxing the penal code failed to win over the elected officials.
Since 2021, abortion has only been legal in Poland when the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or when the woman's life or health is in danger. However, Polish women are free to terminate their pregnancies by their own means, without incurring criminal liability. This is not the case for relatives and activists who provide medical abortions or doctors who assist with miscarriages. They will continue to face prosecution, risking up to three years' imprisonment. "It's a slap in the face for all of us. Doctors will still be able to hide behind the fear of being criminally liable for helping their patients. Families and friends will continue to risk their freedom to support their loved ones," FEDERA, the Federation for Women and Family Planning in Poland, said on X.
"I'm extremely disappointed. I thought that despite everything, the MPs would take into account the fact that the people who help to carry out abortions and are condemned only do so out of love for the person involved," Justyna Wydrzynska told Le Monde in a corridor of the Sejm, Poland's lower house.
The pro-choice activist, a key member of the Abortion Without Borders (Aborcja Bez Granic) collective, was sentenced in March 2023 to 240 hours of community service for sending pills to a Polish woman who wanted to terminate her pregnancy during the pandemic. "We will continue to do our job, and I think we'll be holding our hotlines more frequently in parliament," said the mother-of-one. The organization she is part of assists around 130 people a day in Poland to access abortions, mostly through medication.
In the end, it came down to just three votes, with 218 against and 215 in favor. The most conservative MPs affiliated with the pro-European coalition in power since December 2023 helped to derail its adoption. Out of the 31 members of the PSL agrarian party, including Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, 24 voted against. Their allies in the fall 2023 parliamentary elections, Poland 2050, voted overwhelmingly in favor, as did the center-right camp of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the Left (Lewica) party. The conservative PiS nationalists and the far-right Konfederacja alliance unsurprisingly rejected the bill. President Andrzej Duda, who is close to the PiS, had warned that he would veto it.
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