On November 10, three opposition Polish political parties expected to form a new coalition government – the Civic Platform (KO), Third Way (Trzecia Droga), and The Left (Lewica) – signed an agreement committing to reform certain aspects of current Polish law. Among those reforms was a pledge to overturn the nation’s near-total legal protections for preborn children.
The Left was quick to act on this promise. On the first day of Parliament, November 13, the party introduced two bills aimed at stripping legal protections from Poland’s preborn children. Under current Polish law, killing the preborn child is only permitted if the child came to be as the result of a criminal act (such as rape), or if the mother’s life is in danger — although directly and intentionally killing a preborn child is not medically necessary.
What would these bills do?
1. Killing on demand through first trimester
The first bill introduced by The Left would replace current legal protections for the preborn with abortion-on-demand until the 12th week of pregnancy. After that, abortion would be permitted until the 24th week of pregnancy in cases of rape, incest, and fetal anomalies, and even later if the preborn child were diagnosed with a life-limiting condition or if the pregnancy were deemed a threat to the mother’s heath.
2. Weaken conscience protections
The first bill also seeks to amend Poland’s current conscience protections. Under the proposed law, if a doctor objects to committing abortion on moral and/or religious grounds, the facility which employs that doctor would be forced to provide another doctor or subcontractor who is willing to commit the abortion. Penalties for failing to do so would include the loss of state funding.
3. Decriminalize helping women to kill their children
The second bill would decriminalize the act of aiding and abetting a woman in procuring an abortion. Currently, this is a crime that can be penalized by a prison sentence of up to three years.
Combined, these two proposed bills would strip Poland’s preborn children of protections to a level even less than what they were before near-total preborn protections were introduced in 2020.
The future of these bills is somewhat shaky, however. The Left has only 26 seats in the Polish parliament – 231 votes are necessary to enact legislation. Krzysztof Gawkowski, head of The Left’s parliamentary caucus, claims that the Civic Platform (KO) will support their bills, but this party currently holds 157 seats; the combined votes of both parties would still be insufficient to enact the legislation.
Passage of the bills would require a number of votes from members of parliament belonging to the Third Way (Trzecia Droga) party. However, many of that party’s members have previously indicated that they will not support legislation which would liberalize Poland’s abortion laws beyond what they were prior to 2020.
