AT 13 weeks of pregnancy, Marta, a young woman in Warsaw, learned that her baby had Down’s syndrome and life-threatening defects. After a procedural obstacle course (including a visit to a psychiatrist), she was allowed to undergo a legal abortion, one of just 1,000 or so in Poland every year. Poland has some of Europe’s tightest restrictions on abortion, allowing it only when the mother’s life is at risk, or in cases of rape or severe prenatal defects. Many women turn to illegal abortions or go abroad, often to Germany.

Now the restrictions could get even tighter. Legislation proposed by a pro-life organisation, backed by the Catholic church, would ban abortion even for severe prenatal defects. The Polish parliament’s committee for human rights gave the bill the go-ahead last month, although the Council of Europe and UN experts have urged lawmakers to reject it.

The proposed restrictions suit the social conservatism of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party. According to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the party’s leader, women should give birth even to children with such severe deformities that they are “condemned to death”, so that they can be “baptised, buried, have a name”. (Mr Kaczynski is unmarried and childless.) A recently adopted government scheme offers women a one-off payment of 4,000 zloty ($1,170) for giving birth to a disabled child, dead or alive. At the programme’s recent launch in Ostroleka, a town in north-eastern Poland, children performed on stage dressed as embryos. Since coming to power in 2015, PiS has also ended state-funded IVF treatment and restricted access to the morning-after pill.

The politics of abortion are awkward for PiS, whose support has fallen after a scandal over ministers’ bonuses, though it still leads in the polls. In October 2016 it withdrew support for a bill banning abortion except when the mother’s life is in danger, after mass protests by women across the country. The new bill is unpopular, too. Three-quarters of Poles oppose it, according to a recent poll. On March 23rd an estimated 55,000 people marched through Warsaw towards PiS’s headquarters. “I think, I feel, I decide,” chanted a group of women. One placard urged politicians and priests to account for their own sins. Yet a televised discussion on the protests on public television on March 30th did not feature a single woman.

Since being promoted to prime minister in December, Mateusz Morawiecki, a former banker, has sought to court centrist voters by giving the government a milder face. He sacked several hardline ministers in January. Yet PiS is under pressure from the Catholic church. Last month the Polish Bishops’ Conference urged parliament to consider the abortion law without delay.

Access to prenatal diagnosis and care is already inadequate, especially outside the cities, says Urszula Ajdacka, a Polish gynaecologist who now works in London. Women often find out about severe defects after the deadline for terminating their pregnancy has passed. “The proposed bill would mean the end of prenatal diagnostics in Poland, as women would have no choice,” says Ms Ajdacka. The lawmakers who back it “do not know what situations they are dealing with”.