There will be no crisis in the ruling coalition, at least for now. Although the nervous recounting of votes lasted until the last minutes before the votes and in the end the People's Club, as expected, did not vote uniformly and to the coalition partners' liking, but the supporters of rejecting the projects in the first reading lacked a majority.
All projects on abortion have gone to an emergency committee
Published April 13, 2024 06:56
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Such a result can hardly be considered a sensation, although it was not certain either. The least opposed - this was already evident from Thursday's debate - was the Third Way's project, which assumes a return to the so-called abortion compromise, i.e. the state of affairs before Julia Przyłębska's CT verdict, in the vote. In this case, even four PiS deputies voted against the rejection and 21 (including Jaroslaw Kaczynski) abstained. The Law and Justice club, however, voted in its entirety (except for absent deputies) to reject the Left and Civic Coalition bills.
In the PSL club, there was a rupture in the case of the three co-Coalition projects: eight deputies voted together with the Confederation and Law and Justice, 15 (including Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz) abstained. The rest voted as did the Left and the Civic Coalition - these two clubs, by the way, showed great discipline, although Roman Giertych was missing from the KO club, as the media pointed out. The former leader of the League of Polish Families, who does not hide his anti-abortion views, already hinted during the election campaign that the only thing he could promise was not to vote against the liberalization of the abortion law. It is possible that Giertych will have a disciplinary talk at the club, perhaps some kind of punishment will be imposed on him, but it is rather difficult to assume that Donald Tusk wants to draw more serious consequences.
The emergency committee was already constituted on Friday. According to the announcements made by Sejm Speaker Szymon Holownia, it has 27 deputies: 11 from Law and Justice, nine from the Civic Coalition, two deputies each from the three smaller clubs of the ruling coalition and one deputy from the Confederation. The distribution of votes shows that the committee will have a balance between supporters of liberalization and its opponents, with a slight indication for the latter - to what extent this will affect the pace and direction of the work will probably become clear in the next few weeks. There are 25 women and two men on the committee, the presidium is made up of women alone. Dorota Loboda (KO) was appointed chairwoman.
