This is the latest offensive by fundamentalist Catholic organizations, aimed at putting pressure on the legislator: the Polish Parliament is preparing to consider a citizens’ initiative bill, which wants to make abortion punishable by five to five. twenty-five years in prison for mothers and doctors, and in some cases even life imprisonment. This initiative, which had to collect 100,000 signatures to be examined, was put on the agenda of the next sessions of the Diet, the lower house of Parliament, by its president Elzbieta Witek, member of the conservative national majority of the party. Law and justice (PiS).
Since the judgment of the Constitutional Court of October 22, 2020, which, under the pressure of the same ultracatholic organizations and the Church, declared unconstitutional abortion because of fetal malformation, making abortion almost illegal, only two exceptions allow Polish women to abort legally: endangering the health or life of the mother, and if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. The proposed bill seeks to remove these two exceptions.
If it came into force, it would introduce fundamental changes in the penal code, in particular as regards the very definition of the child and the human being: “A child is human from the moment of its procreation. “” There remains a child procreated until the beginning of childbirth “ thus stipulates the project. The examination of these citizens’ texts above all enables the majority of the PiS to give pledges to the most radical sections of its electorate, without these initiatives having a great chance of success.
“Paralyzing effect”
Grim coincidence: This bill got its first reading as the country rises after the death of a 30-year-old woman in her 22nd days earlier.e week of pregnancy. She was admitted to hospital after losing water. Doctors decided not to proceed with the abortion, until the fetus dies on its own. The young woman died of infectious shock. This excess of caution on the part of certain practitioners, called by feminist organizations “Paralyzing effect”, is considered to be one of the most harmful consequences of the new legislation governing abortion since the judgment of the Constitutional Court. Over the past year, the number of legal abortions performed in Poland has fallen to 300 from a thousand each year previously.
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