Polish lawmakers vote to ease abortion law as presidential veto looms

Polandʼs Parliament passed two bills on Oct. 20 to ease the countryʼs abortion law, though both are likely to face a veto from President Karol Nawrocki.

The bills passed the lower house, Sejm, but still need Senate approval and the presidentʼs signature.

Reuters reported that Nawrocki has signaled he would block any liberalization and that the legislation is “almost certain to be vetoed.”

The first bill, an amendment to the penal code, passed 217-213 with three abstentions, according to the Polish news agency PAP. Opponents included the Law and Justice (PiS) party and 14 members of the Polish Peopleʼs Party (PSL), a partner in the governing coalition.

It would repeal the provision under which anyone who terminates a pregnancy with the womanʼs consent outside the law faces up to three years in prison. Helping or persuading a woman to have such an abortion would also no longer be a crime. Women themselves are not penalized under current law. A similar bill failed 218-215 in July 2024.

The second bill passed 233-203 with one abstention. It seeks to reverse an Oct. 22, 2020, Constitutional Tribunal ruling that abortion for severe and irreversible fetal impairment is unconstitutional. Such abortions have not been legal since the ruling was published in January 2021.

Abortion is now legal only when the pregnancy threatens the womanʼs life or health, or up to 12 weeks if it resulted from a crime.

PiS lawmaker Marcin Warchoł criticized Prime Minister Donald Tuskʼs coalition, saying abortion is murder and that the law shapes consciences, according to the Catholic weekly Niedziela. He said the “December 13 coalition,” a reference to the date Tuskʼs government took office in 2023, wants “a soulless and amoral society.”

The coalition lacks the three-fifths majority in the Sejm needed to override a veto, according to the news portal naTemat.

As a candidate in January 2025, Nawrocki said on Polsat News he would not sign a law restoring the so-called abortion compromise in place before the 2020 ruling. He said he could not allow children with Down syndrome to be aborted, PAP reported at the time.

Catholic perspective

“As a person and a bishop of the Church, I will not change my mind,” Bishop Artur Ważny of Sosnowiec wrote in a statement published the same day by the Polish edition of Aleteia.

He added that the defense of the defenseless, especially the unborn human being, is an absolute foundation he cannot and does not want to abandon.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception and that formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense (Nos. 2270, 2272).

In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II wrote that direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral.

This story was first published by CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News, and has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Source: https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/europe/polish-lawmakers-vote-to-ease-abortion-law-as-presidential-veto-looms