Poland's lower house passed two bills this week that would remove some criminal penalties for those who assist women seeking abortions and permit terminations in cases of foetal abnormalities. The measures are widely expected to be vetoed by President Andrzej Duda, a nationalist aligned with the former PiS government. Even if they survive, reproductive rights groups say they would change little for the vast majority of Polish women who need abortion care. The bills arrive six years after a 2020 Constitutional Tribunal ruling that tightened Poland's already restrictive abortion laws, triggering the largest protests since the fall of communism. Those protests were credited with helping sweep Donald Tusk's coalition into power in 2023 on explicit promises to overhaul abortion law within 100 days. Last year, Tusk publicly abandoned his pledge to legalize abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy, saying "there is simply no majority" for reform. The Center for Reproductive Rights called the bills a "very small-scale change." Legalna Aborcja (Legal Abortion) was blunter: "What does this mean for women who need an abortion right now? Nothing, because none of these bills would help them." Abortion in Poland remains legal only when a pregnancy results from a criminal act — rape or incest — or when it threatens the life or health of the mother. That framework would remain intact even if both bills become law. The structural problem is coalition arithmetic. Tusk's government includes socially conservative parties that block any meaningful liberalization. The result is performative incrementalism: bills narrow enough to pass the Sejm but too narrow to matter, aimed at a president certain to veto them anyway. The political benefit accrues to the coalition, which can claim it tried; the cost is borne by the women the law still forces into illegal procedures or cross-border travel. The Center for Reproductive Rights has proposed a workaround: an interim moratorium on all criminal prosecution related to abortion, bypassing the legislative impasse entirely. The idea originated with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which in 2024 concluded that Polish women face "severe human rights violations" due to the current regime. Tusk has not acted on the proposal. Rallies in 27 cities on Thursday — organized by Fundacja Widzialne and backed by a broad coalition — demanded full decriminalization and National Health Fund coverage for abortion. The street movement that delivered Tusk his mandate now finds itself pressuring the government it created. The gap between the coalition's campaign rhetoric and its legislative output is widening, not closing. Poland remains, in the Center for Reproductive Rights' framing, "completely out of step with the rest of its EU peers." Thousands of Polish women access abortion care annually through illegal channels or by traveling abroad. The country's healthcare system and democratic institutions are not delivering what was promised, and the bills passed this week do not change that trajectory.
