Poland look set to commit a near total
ban on abortion to law, as parliament votes overwhelming in favour of
tougher legislation.
On 23 September, a total of
267 members of the Polish Parliament's lower house voted in favour of a
new bill that would allow terminations only if the mother’s life was at
risk and increase the maximum jail term for practitioners from two
years to five.
The anti-abortion bill, drawn up by
pro-life citizen groups and brought before parliament by the governing
Law and Justice party, would also make women who had an abortion liable
to prison terms, though judges would have the discretion to waive
individual sentences. Just 154 members of the
Polish parliament opposed the bill.
The bill will now be sent to a
committee phase for a further hearing.
At the same time, MPs voted against a counter-measure bill calling for freer access to abortion. Lawmakers
also sent to committee a Law and Justice party-proposed bill limiting
in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).
The measure would make it illegal to
freeze embryos, which its proponents say are human beings from the
moment of fertilisation. It would also only allow women to fertilise one
egg at a time.
The proposed anti-abortion bill has
received the backing of the Catholic Church. In a statement read in
churches on 3 April, they urged politicians to support the proposed ban
and said Poland’s 1993 law, which restricts abortions to cases of rape,
incest, severe foetal damage or threats to a woman’s life, could not be
sustained and should be replaced by a total ban.
“Each person’s life is protected by the
Fifth Commandment, do not kill. So the attitude of Catholics is clear
and unchanging,” read the statement. “In this
jubilee year of Poland’s baptism, we urge all people of goodwill,
believers and nonbelievers, to take action to ensure full legal
protection of unborn lives.”
The bishops have since opposed the jailing of women.
Pro-choice MPs from a number of opposition parties claimed the bill was a set-back for women’s rights in Poland.
“No woman has an abortion because of a
whim: she has one because of a crisis,” Joanna Scheuring-Wieglus, one
parliamentary member is reported to have said in the Telegraph. “The
world should not be made black and white. This bill fosters hypocrisy
upon hypocrisy. Why do so many of you hate women?”
A poll published by the Newsweek Polska magazine this week, showed that 74 per cent of Poles want to keep the existing law. According
to official statistics, there are less than 2,000 legal abortions a
year in Poland, but women’s groups estimate that another 100,000-150,000
procedures are performed illegally or abroad.
The current law, passed in 1993, bans all
terminations unless the pregnancy poses a health risk to the mother,
the foetus is severely deformed or was a result of rape or incest.