Center-right group in Polish ruling coalition submits “compromise” abortion bill to return to pre-2021 law

A bill that would liberalise Poland’s abortion law has been submitted by the centre-right Third Way (Trzecia Droga), which is the more conservative wing of the ruling coalition that took power in December.

The group wants to restore the right to terminate pregnancies in cases where a birth defect is diagnosed in the foetus. Such abortions were banned under the former conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.

Previously, the other two groups forming the current ruling coalition – the centrist Civic Coalition (KO) and The Left (Lewica) – have submitted their own bills that would go even further than Third Way’s by legalising abortion on demand up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

As there is no consensus within the coalition on what the abortion law in Poland should look like, the Third Way wants to organise a referendum to ask the public for their view.

Third Way calls its latest proposal a “rescue bill”, arguing that, due to differences between the coalition partners, “only…a compromise bill has a chance of coming into force at this point”.

Third Way proposes to reintroduce a legal basis for terminating pregnancies in cases where “the results of tests indicate a high probability of severe and irreversible foetal abnormalities or an incurable life-threatening illness.” Such abortions were outlawed under a ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), a body seen as being under PiS influence, in 2020.

Since that ruling came into force at the beginning of 2021, abortions can only be performed if a pregnancy threatens the life or health of the mother or in cases of rape. In practice, however, abortions on these two grounds rarely occur in Poland, and in the first full year of the new rules, the number of legal abortions fell by 90%.

The near-total abortion ban introduced by the TK ruling prompted the largest protests in Poland since the fall of communism. Polling has regularly shown it is opposed by a large majority of Poles. However, they also show no clear majority in favour of either abortion on demand or returning to the relatively restrictive pre-ruling abortion law.

Third Way MP Urszula Pasławska argued while presenting her group’s proposal today that it is “a bill that will find – in our opinion – support from various groups and has a chance to enter into force quickly”. She added that this would be “the first step in empowering women’s rights, which have been destroyed for the last eight years” of PiS rule.

“If someone has a better way to quickly liberalise the abortion law, to quickly introduce legislation nullifying the provisions of the 2020 TK ruling, then we are ready to talk about it, but the truth is that only a rescue law, a compromise law, has a chance of coming into force at this point,” Pasławska said.

While favouring the introduction of abortion on demand, both The Left and KO have acknowledged that this would be difficult as there is opposition to such a move among more conservative Third Way MPs as well as the threat of a veto from PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda.

Today, Third Way MPs underlined that, since there is no agreement on the abortion law in the government, a referendum would help resolve the issue. “I can’t imagine any parliamentarian voting against…giving votes to Poles,” said Pasławska.

However, The Left has long criticised the idea of a referendum, arguing that access to abortion is a human right and as such should not be put on a ballot.

One of its MPs, Katarzyna Kotula, who also serves as equality minister, criticised the Third Way’s proposal to return to the pre-2021 status quo, saying it was “replacing one barbaric law…with another barbaric law that has been in place for years”.

“When it comes to women’s rights you can be for or against, you can be for ‘yes’ or ‘no’, there is no third way,” she told journalists. “This is not a liberalisation…This is a return to a near-total ban on abortion.”

“Today, the Third Way…is hiding behind the referendum,” she said, adding that Polish women’s voices “resounded loud enough” during the mass protests in 2020 and 2021.

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Main image credit: Karolina Grabowska / Pexels

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.