WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's lower house rejected a bill on Friday that sought to scrap penalties for people who help someone to get an abortion, highlighting deep divisions in the ruling coalition over easing one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws.
Under the draft law, people helping to arrange an abortion, for example by providing abortion pills, and doctors performing terminations in the early weeks of pregnancy or due to foetal anomalies would no longer have faced charges.
Reproductive rights and healthcare are high on the agenda in Poland, which under the previous nationalist government introduced a near-total ban on abortion in 2021.
Since taking power in December, Prime Minister Donald Tusk's broad coalition encompassing the moderate left and right has reinstated public funding for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and voted to change rules on accessing emergency contraception.
One of his party's pre-election promises was to grant access to abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, but progress on such bills has stalled because of disagreements within the ruling coalition.
Under the current law, abortion is only legal in cases involving rape or incest, or when a woman's health or life is at risk.
In April, lawmakers sent four bills on easing abortion restrictions to a special bipartisan committee for consideration. Friday's bill was the first of the draft laws to be voted on by the lower house.
It was rejected by almost half of the lawmakers belonging to the Christian Democratic Third Way party, which forms part of the government, as well as members of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) and Confederation parties.
Abortion rights advocates said the result of the vote was a blow.
"Doctors will still be afraid to perform abortions, and friends can be sent to prison for helping their friend. Women will continue to fear for their health and lives," Deputy Family Minister Aleksandra Gajewska wrote on the X social media platform.
Work on the other bills continues. Two of them would allow abortion until 12 weeks and the third, proposed by the Third Way, reinstates the right to abortion in cases of foetal anomalies, returning to the situation before a constitutional court ruling in 2020.
President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the PiS party and staunchly anti-abortion, had vowed to use his presidential veto to stop Friday's bill from becoming law if it passed. He is due to leave office late next year.
(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Helen Popper)