Poland’s Catholic Church has spoken out against proposals by Poland’s new ruling coalition to liberalise the country’s abortion law and restore prescription-free access to the morning-after contraceptive pill.
Civic Coalition (KO), the largest group in Poland’s ruling coalition, has submitted a bill to parliament to introduce abortion on demand up to the 12th week of pregnancy.
That would not only end the current near-total ban on
abortion – which was introduced in 2021 with the support of the Church –
but establish a more permissive legal framework around abortion than
existed before, reports Notes from Poland, a small non-mainstream Polish media.
The ruling coalition itself has also approved
legislation to allow over-the-counter access to emergency
contraception. That would reverse a 2017 decision by the former
conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government that made Poland one of
only two EU countries in which a prescription is required.
Leszek Gęsiak, spokesman for the Polish Episcopal Conference (KEP) – the central representative body of the Catholic Church in Poland – said the two bills are “devastating” as they “bring death under the guise of euphemistic-sounding slogans”.
He highlighted that “because human life begins at conception” the
issue of abortion is “not a private matter” and that “a person does not
have the right to decide about the life or death of another person”.
He concluded: “Taking someone’s life can never be called progress or modernity.”
Gęsiak
also rejected the claim by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk that the
morning-after pill only prevents fertilisation and does not cause
abortion, citing the opinion of priest and bioethicist Fr Piotr
Kieniewicz, who argues that the pill can also cause early-stage
abortion.
“One must never comply with such laws even if they are introduced democratically,” said KEP’s president, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, quoting from Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae. “When a parliamentary or social majority decides that the killing of unborn human life is legally permissible, even under certain conditions, is it not thereby making a ‘tyrannical’ decision towards the weakest and most defenceless human being?”
Recent opinion polls appear to show that a large majority of the Polish public want to end the current near-total ban on abortion, which was one of the strictest laws in Europe, says Notes from Poland. Though it adds that opinion among the public and the ruling collation remains split on whether to go as far as introducing abortion on demand.
In recent years the Catholic Church in Poland has faced criticism for
its involvement in political issues, especially when it comes to
abortion, and for its close relationship with the former PiS government.
At
the same time, a growing number of Poles are turning away from the
Catholic Church, though not necessarily from religious belief itself,
Katarzyna Skiba writes.
This
is creating challenges both for the Church but also for Polish
identity, which has historically been closely entwined with Catholicism.