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.

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. Read more via Guardian