Protest against a ruling on tightening the abortion law, in Warsaw on 29 October 2020.
Photo by Omar Marques/Getty Images
President Karol Nawrocki is aligned with the party that triggered mass protests with its abortion clampdown five years ago, and could veto the government’s bills.
Poland’s lower chamber of parliament approved two bills that would loosen the country’s strict abortion restrictions on 20 October 2026, marking a breakthrough for Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition nearly three years after they took power, promising to restore reproductive rights.
The measures, which are likely to be vetoed by the opposition-aligned President Karol Nawrocki, would end criminal penalties for helping a woman obtain an abortion and re-legalize terminations involving severe fetal abnormalities, undoing one of the crucial elements of Poland’s near-total abortion ban.
“The state trusts women. A woman who terminates her own pregnancy is already exempt from criminal punishment. It’s time to stop punishing everyone who loves us, worries about us and respects our choices,” Katarzyna Kotula, Poland’s government equality commissioner and a lawmaker from the Left, said on X.
Still, neither bill would allow abortion on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, as Tusk’s Civic Coalition promised during the 2023 election campaign. The multi-party coalition includes many conservatives and lacks agreement on the liberalization going this far.
Both bills now move from the lower chamber (the Sejm) to the Senate, where they seem poised to pass, but their eventual fate remains uncertain. President Karol Nawrocki, an ally of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, said before his election in 2025 that he would not sign legislation easing abortion rules.
“By refusing to sign [the abortion] legislation, the president is hurting people,” Włodzimierz Czarzasty, speaker of the Sejm, said Tuesday before the votes. “If he wants to hurt women, he will hurt them. I think women will see that and hear that.”
Tusk’s coalition government will likely keep turning up the heat on the president and PiS if Nawrocki blocks the liberalization, as he has said he would.
Overriding a presidential veto requires a three-fifths majority in the Sejm that the Tusk-led coalition doesn’t have. The proposals that passed Tuesday lingered in a parliamentary committee for two years before surfacing, spurred by the campaign heating up 12 months before the next general election, slated for late 2027.
Overturning restrictions
At the parliamentary level, ending criminal penalties for helping women with abortion passed with 217 votes in favor, 213 against and three abstentions. The other bill won a slightly clearer majority of 233 for, 203 against and a single abstention.
SOURCE: Politico, by Wojciech Kość, 20 October 2026. https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-parliament-eases-abortion-laws-ichallenge-conservative-president/.