Four bills submitted by Poland’s ruling coalition to liberalise the abortion law have passed a first hurdle in parliament as lawmakers on Friday voted down motions to reject the reforms in the first reading.
The alliance of pro-EU parties came to power in October on a pledge to legalise abortion, currently allowed only if pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, or if it threatens the life or health of the mother.
“We keep our word! The parliament will proceed with all projects on the right to abortion,” the Civic Coalition grouping of Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on social media after the vote in the devoutly Catholic country.
The bills, aimed at granting women more reproductive rights, are due to be sent to a special parliamentary commission.
But even if parliament approves the reforms, President Andrzej Duda, a conservative Catholic ally of the right-wing opposition PiS party, is unlikely to sign them into law.
The government alliance — comprising Tusk’s Civic Coalition and junior partners Third Way and Left — does not have the required three-fifths majority to overturn a presidential veto.
In case of a standoff, the alliance may have to wait until next year’s presidential elections, hoping for Duda’s ouster by a liberal candidate.
“I would like this commission to finish its work before the presidential elections,” Natalia Broniarczyk from the Abortion Dream Team nonprofit organisation told reporters after the vote.
“I have a very serious question to all presidential candidates… what will you do with the bill that will come out of this commission?” she added.
According to an opinion poll by Ipsos, 35 percent of Poles are in favour of allowing abortion until the 12th week of pregnancy, while 14 percent said they would keep the current rules.
Twenty-three percent want a referendum on liberalising the abortion law, a solution backed by Third Way but strongly criticised by women’s rights campaigners.
