Expected reforms to loosen Poland’s historically strict abortion laws have been derailed by a political “betrayal”—with potentially lasting consequences for women’s health. Owen Dyer reports Abortion reform in Poland seems much less likely after the narrow 12 July defeat of a bill that would have decriminalised assisting a consenting woman to obtain an abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The bill, drafted by the Left Party (Lewica), part of prime minister Donald Tusk’s governing coalition, was defeated by 218 votes to 215 in the Sejm, Poland’s lower house. It was an embarrassment for Tusk’s Civic Platform Party after the other parties in his Civic Coalition voted unanimously for decriminalisation, while three of his own party’s MPs failed to vote. But a far more serious obstacle to legal abortion arose in the shape of the Polish People’s Party (PSL). This agrarian conservative party, part of the government but outside Tusk’s narrower Civic Coalition, allows its MPs free vo

Expected reforms to loosen Poland’s historically strict abortion laws have been derailed by a political “betrayal”—with potentially lasting consequences for women’s health. Owen Dyer reports Abortion reform in Poland seems much less likely after the narrow 12 July defeat of a bill that would have decriminalised assisting a consenting woman to obtain an abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The bill, drafted by the Left Party (Lewica), part of prime minister Donald Tusk’s governing coalition, was defeated by 218 votes to 215 in the Sejm, Poland’s lower house. It was an embarrassment for Tusk’s Civic Platform Party after the other parties in his Civic Coalition voted unanimously for decriminalisation, while three of his own party’s MPs failed to vote. But a far more serious obstacle to legal abortion arose in the shape of the Polish People’s Party (PSL). This agrarian conservative party, part of the government but outside Tusk’s narrower Civic Coalition, allows its MPs free vo