Poland’s parliament has deferred a final decision on a bill that seeks to tighten the country’s already strict abortion legislation.

The bill would outlaw abortion on the grounds of serious foetal abnormalities, one of a small number of exceptions to a near-total ban on abortion currently in place in the country. It has been sent back to a parliamentary committee for further work.

The proposed new restriction was proposed by an ultra-conservative Catholic group, under a regulation that allows citizen’s initiatives that gain more than 100,000 signatures to be debated.

Parliament, dominated by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, had a choice of rejecting the bill out of hand or fast-tracking it to a second reading, but on Thursday chose the middle-road option. In the past, this has been a way to let legislation quietly die, but it could still resurface.

Previous attempts to impose a total abortion plan in the country had been tentatively supported by parts of PiS, but the government backed down after mass protests. This week, dozens of Polish women have protested in Warsaw despite a strict lockdown currently in place over coronavirus.

President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, said earlier this month that “killing disabled children is simply murder” and promised he would sign the law if it reached him. Rights groups both in Poland and internationally have condemned the legislation and called on parliament to reject it out of hand.

Poland already has some of the strictest legislation in Europe, with abortion illegal except in cases of rape or incest, where the mother’s life is at risk or where there are severe foetal abnormalities. If passed, the bill would end almost all legal abortion in the country.

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Many women currently travel abroad to seek reproductive healthcare or use pills to carry out medical abortions at home. However coronavirus restrictions are making these options more difficult at the moment.

The Polish parliament also pushed another citizen initiative bill on sex education to committee on Thursday. The authors of the bill, dubbed “Stop paedophilia”, said those who most promoted sex education in schools were often people who “groom and familiarise children with homosexuality”.

“We will continue to watch the authorities’ every move to ensure that these regressive bills do not proceed any further when they inevitably resurface,” said Amnesty International’s Poland director, Draginja Nadazdin, in a statement.