After narrowly losing his bid in parliament to loosen the country’s abortion laws, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is handing out punishments to the three party members who de facto abstained from the vote, allowing the measure to fail.
The bill would have decriminalized the act of helping a woman get an abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy. It failed by just three votes after three members of Tusk’s liberal Civic Coalition (KO) party did not join in the parliamentary session because of other important commitments.
Tusk took the helm of the Polish government last year when conservative Law and Justice (PiS) failed to form a coalition despite gathering the largest number of votes in the October elections. He governs in a broad coalition of his own party, the Left Party, the centrist Poland 2050 party, and the Polish People’s Party (PSL), but not even all of his coalition partners were on board with his proposed changes to the abortion law. During the July 12 vote, 24 PSL deputies voted with all the opposition MPs against this easing of the abortion law, for a total of 218 votes against and 215 in favor of the bill.
One member of Tusk’s party who was absent from the vote, Krzysztof Grabczuk, had been excused as he was in hospital.
Also absent was the deputy minister of technology and development, Waldemar Sługocki, a member of Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO). He pled a long-planned trip to the United States as his excuse for missing the vote, but it fell on deaf ears with Tusk. He was sacked from the ministerial post on Tuesday.
Roman Giertych, now former vice chairman of the KO parliamentary club, also failed to appear in parliament that day. Tusk also removed him from his extra-parliamentary job within the party.
“Discipline in the October 15 coalition is necessary so that a crack does not appear that will allow PiS to get its hands on the governing process,” Tusk said.
He also told Polish media, “I feel bad I didn’t manage to convince everyone to vote like I did.”
While Tusk took out his frustration with not being able to garner a majority in parliament on the abortion issue on his own party members, he promised he would not let his coalition fall apart over abortion.
