Poland’s ruling-coalition bill jeopardizes children’s lives and women’s safety

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· The pro-abortion lobby continues to attempt to expand legal access to abortion in Poland.

· Work is underway in the Polish Sejm on a draft amendment to the Penal Code, brought by deputies of the Left, PM Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition and the Sejm speaker’s Third Way alliance after the Left’s previous draft failed to gain the necessary support.

· The new draft includes numerous provisions that are incompatible with Poland’s Constitution and laws as well as with binding international agreements. It aims at a significant reduction of legal protection for life in the prenatal phase.

· The proposed legislation stipulates significant mitigation of criminal liability for perpetrators of the crime of illegal abortion, as well as aiding and abetting illegal abortion resulting in the death of the woman. This would entail a reduction in legal protection for pregnant women.

· The Ordo Iuris Institute has prepared a legal opinion on the draft and is calling for its rejection at the first reading.

In the last days of July, a draft amendment to the Penal Code, which retained the provisions of the Left’s original draft, was submitted to the Sejm. (Parliamentary Draft No. 176, with an auto-amendment, was rejected by the Sejm in a vote on July 12, 2024.) The draft provides for a number of modifications to the provisions of the Penal Code concerning the termination of pregnancy. The proposed modifications are incompatible with the current standard of protection of human life under the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, the jurisprudence of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (in particular, its 1997 ruling in case K 26/96, which declared unconstitutional a provision allowing abortion “due to the difficult material or personal situation of the mother”) and the Supreme Court, laws, and international agreements, including the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The provisions of the Left’s draft aim to reduce drastically the legal protection of human life in the prenatal phase, particularly through the proposed abolition of criminal liability for perpetrators of the crime of illegal abortion up to the end of the 12th week of pregnancy. Under the bill’s provisions, the abrogation of criminal responsibility would also extend to activities that are now considered crimes: assisting a woman in an illegal abortion, as well as persuading her to commit the act.

More on the Polish ruling coalition’s original four abortion bills: All or nothing. Life and death vote on pro-abortion bills

The authors of the draft do not limit their efforts to the legal status of the life of conceived children. They also propose resolutions according to which perpetrators of the crime of illegal abortion (including aiding and abetting) could avoid criminal responsibility, even when these actions lead to the death of a pregnant woman. The entirety of the proposed legislation indicates an overriding goal that is not the protection of women, as the drafters claim, but the protection of organizations and activists who are engaged in the illegal distribution of abortion pills and who commit the crime of aiding and abetting illegal abortion (Article 152 § 2 of the Polish Penal Code).

“What is most shocking is that the proposed rendition of the criminal law limits liability for causing the death of a pregnant woman through an illegal abortion, which proves all the more that the drafters have no regard for the welfare of women, which they so often invoke in public speeches,” concluded attorney Katarzyna Gęsiak, director of the Ordo Iuris Center for Medical Law and Bioethics.