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 The lower house voted late on Wednesday to send the bill to a
parliamentary committee, a victory for the ruling Law and Justice (PiS)
party whose plan for a near-total ban on abortion was rejected after
mass protests in 2016.
The new bill would ban abortions due to irreversible damage to the
fetus, removing the main legal recourse Polish women have to obtain
a termination.
PiS, supported by the powerful Catholic Church, has been pushing to
enforce religious values in public life, with the party leader and
the country's paramount politician, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, long saying
that abortions due to damage to a fetus must be outlawed.
Earlier on Wednesday, parliament rejected a proposal to liberalize
the abortion law which otherwise only allows the procedure only when
the mother's health or life are in danger or the pregnancy resulted
from rape or incest.
Of Poland's 1,100 or so legal abortions in 2016, 1,042 were done due
to a damaged fetus.
Kaja Godek, a member of the "Stop Abortion" public initiative that
submitted the bill, told parliament that prenatal tests to check a
fetus' health were being misused.
Poland's constitution allows citizens to submit legislative
proposals if they can gather 100,000 signatures.
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"Instead of treating and preparing parents and doctors to receive a
child and help the child, it is being made easier to make selection
for an extermination," Godek said, according to a parliamentary
transcript.
A poll conducted for the Rzeczpospolita newspaper found only 11
percent of Poles were in favor of further restricting abortion laws,
while 46.5 percent would like to see them eased.
A group of conservative lawmakers has asked the Constitutional
Tribunal, a body that checks whether laws comply with the
constitution, to rule on the legality of allowing abortions of a
damaged fetus. The Tribunal has yet to rule.
(Addtional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Writing by Lidia
Kelly; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
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