After growing protests from Polish women and an embarrassing debate in the European Parliament, Poland's governing party retreated on Thursday from a proposed law that would have made virtually all abortions illegal.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the party, the right-wing Law and Justice Party, said that while the government agreed with the intent of such a law, it opposed the version proposed by an anti-abortion group.
"Observing the social developments, we have come to a conclusion that this legislation will have an opposite effect to the one that was intended," he said. "This is not the right way to proceed."
The year-old Polish government has clashed often with European Union officials, particularly over moves that effectively hobbled the country's constitutional tribunal, the main check on the governing party. So the clash over abortion, a delicate social issue, was scrutinised throughout Europe for signs of how far Law and Justice could go in enacting its conservative agenda at a time of rising nationalism across the Continent.
Poland already has among the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, providing exceptions only in cases of incest, rape, severely damaged foetuses and threats to the mother's life.
Three days after thousands of women dressed in black protested nationwide, 352 of the 428 lawmakers present in Poland's lower house of Parliament voted against the proposal, which would have eliminated all of the exceptions but one: threat to the mother's life. Tightening abortion laws has been a priority for the Catholic Church, which plays a powerful role in the country and is closely allied with Kaczynski's party, which has a solid parliamentary majority.
The vote came a day after a government-dominated parliamentary body, the Justice and Human Rights Commission, surprised government opponents by voting not to support the legislation in Thursday's second round of voting, presaging the measure's defeat.
The commission's ruling was followed by 90 minutes of heated discussions that did not end until early Thursday. Stanislaw Tyszka, deputy marshal of the lower house of Parliament, ended the debate by scolding members. "You are behaving like mad monkeys," he said.
Law and Justice members had voted overwhelmingly to move the bill forward in the first round of voting last month, but party leaders had a change of heart.
Party officials said they now objected to the bill in part because it would have punished women who received abortions, including potential prison terms. The bill also called for imprisoning doctors who performed abortions. Before Wednesday's commission vote, the Conference of the Polish Episcopate posted a statement on its website saying that the church also does not support any legislation that calls for punishing women for having abortions.
Krystyna Pawlowicz, a commission member and one of the governing party's most outspoken politicians, posted on her Facebook page that the Episcopate's position had effectively "authorised" the vote against the measure.
Also on Wednesday, the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, held an emotional debate over the bill, a debate that Law and Justice had tried to avert as an intrusion into Poland's sovereignty.
Malin Björk, from Sweden's Left Party, called the proposed law "a huge blow against women's rights." Gianni Pittella, president of the European Parliament's Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, said the legislation undercut European Union values "and threatens the right to health of women."
Speakers for the Polish government said the debate should never have happened. "You are talking about something on which you don't have the right to legislate," said Jadwiga Wisniewska, a European Parliament member from Law and Justice.
The government had insisted throughout the debate that the legislation had not been its project, but a proposal from anti-abortion citizen groups. Leaders of those groups reacted with outrage to what they saw as a betrayal.
Joanna Banasiuk, a leader of Ordo Iuris, the group that had written the legislation, said that despite the anger, the organisation would accept changing the measure to remove punishments for women.
Another Ordo Iuris official, Mariusz Dzierzawski, took on the governing party's leader directly. "Jaroslaw Kaczynski just honestly thinks that sick children should be aborted," he said.
Opposition politicians and leaders of the protests against the legislation were triumphant.
"Kaczynski caved from the wrath of thousands of women," said Marcelina Zawisza, from the left-wing Together Party that coordinated the street protests, on her Facebook page. "This is the first victorious battle in our fight for our dignity and rights. But the war is not over yet."
Law and Justice officials said that the government intended to stick with the current law, for the time being, but was considering possible future changes.
Prime Minister Beata Szydlo told Parliament just before Thursday's vote that her government continued to believe that its main job was to protect human life from the moment of conception.
She added that by the end of the year, the government would prepare a national programme to support families with disabled children and women who give birth even after their fetuses have been found to have genetic disorders.
Rafal Chwedoruk, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw, said the government was scrambling to do "damage control" over its miscalculation in pushing the issue.
"This vote is obviously an attempt to put an end to this issue as soon and as painlessly as possible," he said.
© 2016 The New York Times News Service
