A nurse holds a newborn baby | Paulo Cunha/EPA Poland to pay women whose babies have life-threatening health problems Opponents say the new law is another attempt to tighten abortion law in Poland.

WARSAW — The Polish parliament passed a law Friday to pay women whose babies are born with severe and possibly lethal developmental problems.

Women’s organizations protested the law, which stipulates that pregnant women whose babies are found to have “severe and irreversible handicap or incurable life-threatening disease” will receive a one-off payment of PLN4,000 (€925) if they decide to give birth to the baby rather than terminate the pregnancy. Serious defects that occur while giving birth will make a mother eligible for the payment as well.

In theory, President Andrzej Duda could veto the law, which was passed by lawmakers from the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), but Duda generally doesn't oppose the ruling party.

“Thanks to progress in medicine, a woman can see early on in the pregnancy if the fetus is not developing normally and that she will give birth to a very sick baby. She has the right to make a decision if she wants that baby," the journalist Agnieszka Wiśniewska wrote in Krytyka Polityczna, a left-leaning magazine. “In Poland, however, the choice is only theoretical. ... The new law is in fact preparing ground for another attempt to tighten abortion law in Poland."

Last month, tens of thousands of Poles — many of them women — took part in the so-called “Black Protest” against a government proposal that would ban abortion outright in the country.

But this time around, lawmakers worked swiftly to pass the law, effectively preventing the women from organizing any protests.

In October, after the government was forced to back down, PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski, pledged to keep trying to limit legal abortion.

“We will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, women end up giving birth so that the child can be baptized, buried and have a name,” he said at the time.