(Bloomberg) -- Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government failed to pass legislation to decriminalize abortion in a tight vote, laying bare divisions within the ruling coalition on an issue that’s polarized the nation.
Lawmakers voted 215 in favor and 218 against the bill with two abstentions on Friday, falling short of the majority led by Tusk’s Civic Coalition. Deputies from the Polish People’s Party — a conservative faction within the ruling coalition with a base of mostly rural voters — had made clear they didn’t support the measure.
Tusk ran his successful election campaign last year on a pledge to restore women’s reproductive rights after the previous nationalist administration imposed one of the European Union’s most restrictive anti-abortion laws.
The issue was polarizing enough to be excluded from the three-party coalition agreement forged after parliamentary elections in October, which cobbled together parties from across the political spectrum. The issue has divided the alliance — and the nationalist opposition has staunchly opposed weakening the legislation that they put in place during eight years in power.
Education Minister Barbara Nowacka, a Tusk ally within the premier’s Civic Coalition, called the vote a betrayal.
“To say that they cheated and it’s a shame is an understatement,” Nowacka said in a post on social media platform X.
The draft bill that came to a vote Friday was also only the first in a package of measures, though none of them are likely to be signed into law soon as President Andrzej Duda — an ally of the nationalists — has pledged to veto most aspects of Tusk’s liberal agenda.
The proposed legislation sought to scrap criminal liability — including potential prison sentences of up to three years — for those helping women seeking to terminate pregnancies. It would also lift a prohibition on private individuals providing emergency contraception pills, a rule that’s been actively imposed by the judiciary.
In March, an activist from Abortion Dream Team, Justyna Wydrzynska, was sentenced to eight months’ community service for having sent abortion pills to a woman seeking to terminate her pregnancy.
“We will keep helping, because someone has to do it,” Natalia Broniarczyk, another activist from the group who attended the parliamentary vote, told journalists. “I am disappointed that still so little has changed.”
Heavy Lifting Ahead
The failed vote is unlikely to pose a risk to Tusk’s government, which has reached consensus in other areas, particularly security. But it’s a signal of the heavy lifting ahead for the effort to relax Poland’s abortion laws, particularly since coalition lawmakers viewed the first of four pieces of legislation as the most likely to be approved.
Members of the alliance have different approaches to abortion. Tusk’s liberal Civic Coalition and the Left seek to allow termination in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, while the Third Way alliance are pushing for a referendum to secure a voter mandate for the agenda.
Milosz Motyka, a spokesman for the Polish People’s Party, or PSL, said the party would adhere to it position — and that votes for legislation outside the coalition agreement didn’t require coalition discipline.
“We are honest with ourselves and our voters from beginning to end,” Motyka told reporters. “Every parliamentarian knew how a parliamentarian from the PSL could behave.”
With the divisions and Duda’s veto throwing up roadblocks, Tusk has put in place several measures to bypass barriers to reproductive rights.
Last month, the Health Ministry imposed fines on hospitals that refuse to perform legal abortions to women with life-threatening pregnancies. It’s one of few circumstances in which Poland’s current laws permit abortion, alongside cases where pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
In March, when Duda vetoed a bill reversing a 2017 ban on prescription-free access to emergency contraception, the Health Ministry issued a pilot regulation granting pharmacists the right to sell the morning-after pill on consultation at the point of sale for women from the age of 15.
--With assistance from Mark Sweetman.
(Updates with comments from education minister, activist and lawmaker beginning in fifth paragraph.)
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