After an intense debate on Thursday, the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish legislature, voted on four abortion-related proposals on Friday. Following the votes, an Extraordinary Committee was established to draft new abortion laws. Concurrently, the EU Parliament voted to include the right to a safe and legal abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, directly condemning Poland’s almost total abortion ban.
The votes in the Sejm were on the dismissal of four proposals to amend the current abortion law. The first proposal, Bill 176, seeks to decriminalise abortions up to 12 weeks and thereafter in cases of severe, incurable conditions. When the Sejm voted on a motion to quash the proposal, it received 204 votes for dismissal, but 223 votes for continuation. This was also the case for the second bill, Bill 177, which aimed to decriminalize the assistance of women in obtaining an abortion. Bill’s motion to dismiss also failed, secured 206 to 222 votes in favour of progression.
The third proposal, Bill 223, aimed to reverse a 2020 ruling from the Polish Constitutional Court which narrowed the right to abortion. The motion to quash the bill failed with 171 votes to 244. The final suggestion, Bill 224, was directed towards the Polish government regulating the right to abortion. Out of the total, 206 voted to dismiss the bill, whilst 222 voted to allow its progression through the legislative process.
The Sejm subsequently created an Extraordinary Committee to review the abortion-related draft laws. The committee met on Friday, with MP Dorota Łoboda appointed as the chairwoman.
The Thursday debate on the four proposals received a mixed response from politicians and religious leaders in the predominantly Catholic country. In light of the parliamentary votes enabling the four proposals to continue in the legislative process, the Polish Equality Minister, Katarzyna Kotula claimed on Twitter that it is easier for Catholic patients to access holy relics in Polish hospitals than for a woman to get an abortion. She also expressed hope for a significant and meaningful discussion about abortion in Poland.
Mikolaj Pawlak, former Polish Children’s Ombudsman and the representative for Catholic clergy in the country, expressed concern to the PAP, Polish state media outlet, citing the proposals’ inconsistency with Article 2(1) of the Law on the Ombudsman of Children, which states that a child is every person from the moment of conception until the age of majority.
This occurred the day following the EU Parliament’s vote to include the right to a safe and legal abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. They voted to include “everyone has the right to bodily autonomy, to free, informed, full and universal access to SRHR, and to all related healthcare services without discrimination, including access to safe and legal abortion,” to Article 3 of the charter. The Parliament also, in its approved proposal, directly condemned Poland for criminalizing abortion in contradiction to the 2022 World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines.
Abortion has been a heated topic in Poland, creating deep political tensions with the EU. In a 5-2 vote in 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that a Polish court breached a woman’s right to private and family life as she was forced to travel abroad to receive an abortion due to a fetal anomaly.
In 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Court ruled that, except in extreme cases such as rape or incest, abortion is not legal even in cases of fetal defects leading to mass protests.