San Francisco Frontiers - Polish left submits bills to liberalise abortion law

Abortion in the majority-Catholic country is currently legal only if the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest or threatens the life or health of the woman.

"One of them provides for full legalisation of the right to terminate a pregnancy until the 12th week," Left lawmaker Anna Maria Zukowska told AFP.

"The other is a bill decriminalising abortion assistance," she added.

The draft legislation was submitted on Monday, when Poland's new parliament met for the first time after an October general election.

The Left is part of a pro-EU coalition that won enough votes to form a majority and is bidding to form a government and oust the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party which has been in power since 2015.

The president, however, has given the PiS first shot at forming the government, as it came first in the election -- though it fell short of a majority.

Poland has long had a stringent abortion law which was further tightened in 2021 to ban terminations due to foetal defects.

Even before the law was tightened, fewer than 2,000 legal abortions per year were carried out in the EU member of 38 million people.

An additional 200,000 women terminated pregnancies either illegally or abroad, according to women's groups.

But with abortion assistance outlawed in Poland, activists and doctors who help risk jail time.

In March, activist Justyna Wydrzynska was found guilty of supplying a pregnant woman with abortion pills in the first such case. She was sentenced to community service.

According to a opinion poll conducted at the time, 84 percent of Poles were in favour of easing the abortion restrictions.

W.Thompson--SFF