Poland’s Tusk hits a wall on legalizing abortion

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WARSAW — Donald Tusk is facing his most severe political setback since becoming Polish prime minister as he hits a brick wall on one of his biggest campaign promises: Increasing access to abortion.

Tusk and his coalition partners pulled off a surprisingly convincing election win in October on the back of pledges to restore the rule of law and push through liberalizing reforms, such as allowing same-sex partnerships and overturning the country’s draconian anti-abortion regulations.

On July 12, however, Tusk suffered what looks like an ominous defeat when a parliamentary vote to stop prosecuting people who assist with abortions failed — by a wafer-thin 218-to-215 margin — because of conservatives within his ruling coalition.

It’s a serious headache for Tusk, raising questions of whether he has a working majority to deliver his key reforms. Piling on the pressure, some 1,000 or so furious demonstrators gathered in front of parliament on Tuesday evening to demand his government come good on his electoral promises.

“What the fuck did they think was going to happen: that we’re going to give up? Fuck off!” yelled Marta Lempart from Women’s Strike, the rally’s main organizer, from the stage.

Joanna Adamczyk, a clerk in her 30s, described herself as “frustrated and exhausted.”

“The inability to deliver on key and easy-to-fulfill campaign promises — in the sense that they do not require extensive budget expenditure — shows the weakness of the government, which cannot deliver what it promised, or that the coalition is disregarding its female voters,” she said.

“I want to get pregnant but I’m afraid that if any complications arise, not only will the state not help me, but it will also prosecute my partner or friends if they help me terminate in case the foetus has, say, Edwards syndrome. How much more can we take?” Adamczyk added.

Underlining the caustic, polarized fault lines in the debate on abortion, a rival group of anti-abortion demonstrators chanted “abort yourselves!” and “murderers!” from the other side of a police cordon.

Opposition in government ranks

The right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which led the country for eight years until October’s election, tightened Poland’s abortion rules to a near-total ban in 2020. Abortion is only allowed in cases of rape or incest, or if the life of the woman is endangered.

Cases of women who died because they were denied abortions and faced complications then served to undermine PiS’ popularity.

In the run-up to the vote on July 12, Tusk had stressed decriminalizing abortion as central to his vision of reform in the country of 38 million people.

“We will vote to decriminalize abortion. We will vote for civil partnerships as a government project, although not everyone was convinced. We’re done discussing, it’s time for decisions,” Tusk, prime minister since December, posted on X on July 10.

Posting on social media proved easier than delivering actual change, however.

The coalition’s conservatives from the agrarian Polish People’s Party (PSL) joined forces with the opposition from PiS and the far-right Konfederacja to strike down the proposal.

Clearly rattled, Tusk commented: “That was not an ordinary vote,” before promptly suspending two MPs from his Civic Coalition party who didn’t vote with the party line. A third MP was excused as he was in hospital. On Tuesday, the PM also dismissed one of the rogue MPs from the post of a deputy minister.

During Tuesday’s protest, Adamczyk, the clerk, made clear many women had voted for Tusk precisely to deliver on this issue.

“I am tired of protesting once again over an issue that should be obvious to deal with. It was primarily women who, through a wave of protests [in 2020], contributed to weakening the PiS government, and it was mainly women who contributed to the success of the coalition,” she said.

The problem is, however, that there was only so much Tusk could do about the agrarian PSL in his coalition, and its opposition shows the precarious nature of his majority as he tries to drive through social reform. Poland is a nation with a strong Catholic heritage, and the agrarians cast themselves as guardians of traditional values, which are more deeply rooted in the countryside than big cities.

“We believe that the coalition … needs a strong conservative wing to survive and implement its program. Because this is largely what Polish society is like,” Adam Jarubas, a newly elected member of the European Parliament for the PSL, told Polish Radio on Tuesday.

Lempart from Women’s Strike also called on Tusk to dismiss Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz from the PSL party as deputy prime minister.

In an interview with Polsat News, Kosiniak-Kamysz insisted abortion was not such a priority to voters. “In the latest CBOS [a state pollster] survey, the most important issues the government should address were listed as follows: Polish security and border security ranked first, followed by healthcare security, and then the quality of life and the economy. Abortion ranked last, and civil partnerships came second to last,” he argued.

The rocky road ahead

The big question is: what happens next, particularly given a coalition majority looks difficult to secure? As the decriminalization proposal, which appeared the least divisive, fell through, the chances appear slim that Tusk and the Left party will be able to corral the conservatives to their side for much else.

A special parliamentary commission is still trying to produce a compromise text on a proposal to allow termination up until the 12th week of the pregnancy, a change favored by Tusk’s party and the Left.

But the conservatives from PSL and Polska 2050, who together form a group called the Third Way, want a much more restrictive draft, seeking only to restore what’s known as “the 1993 compromise.” That would allow abortion only when there’s a justifiable belief that the pregnancy constitutes a threat to life or a serious threat to the health of the mother; if the fetus is “irreversibly damaged”; or that an illegal act led to the pregnancy.

That is the sort of compromise that a majority of voters says no longer fits Poland in 2024.

“It’s a beautiful day and I have better things to do but I had to come here,” said Paulina Kryńska, 43, who works in marketing for a real estate company, speaking at Tuesday’s protest in front of parliament.

“I’ve spent the last four years supporting them [the Tusk coalition] and protesting against the previous government. Now they don’t have the decency to return the favor by voting on a law that would prevent me from dying or going to jail for something that should be my basic human right,” Kryńska said.

The Left said last week it would like to submit the decriminalization proposal to a vote again, hoping that a lucky coincidence of absenteeism among opposing MPs and determination on the side of the backers might just allow the bill to squeak through.

Should that gamble pay off, however, the proposal will almost certainly be vetoed by President Andrzej Duda, who represents the last bastion of PiS power.

A veto could prove instrumental in rallying liberal voters to back an anti-PiS candidate in a presidential election next year. That is assuming that that the coalition can get as far as passing anything for Duda to veto.

For his part, Tusk said on Tuesday he was saddened by the failure of the vote and would put out new guidelines on Monday for how prosecutors should handle abortion-related cases.

“I feel very bad that I couldn’t find arguments to convince those who voted differently than I did. Personally … I am doing everything … so that women in Poland feel respected and free. But I feel responsible for everything happening in the country today, including within the [ruling] coalition. If I hear you say that I failed in this matter, then yes, you have the right to believe that.”

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