The Polish government under Prime Minister Donald Tusk has imposed a hefty fine on a hospital in Pabianice near Łódź for refusing to perform an abortion. This fine marks the first such case since Poland’s anti-life government introduce a bill to weaken protections for unborn children.
During a press conference this week, Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna declared that the Pabianice Medical Centre was fined 550,000 zl. ($135,943 US) on June 17. According to the left-wing news site Notes From Poland., she added that audit proceedings on two other medical facilities were in the “final stages” and that they would most likely be punished as well,
Since the end of May this year, changes to regulations on the general conditions of healthcare service contracts materialized, obliging Polish hospitals who obtain public funds for obstetrics and gynecology to ensure that at least one doctor on staff can perform abortion-related procedures, on the pretext of saving the life of the mother. The government has implemented a contractual penalty of up to 2 percent of the contract’s value for each verified breach of its new requirements, and permits for partial or total termination of contracts without notice should medical centers fail to comply.
Poland’s Ministry of Health claimed that as some doctors relied too much on the conscience clause under Article 39 of the Doctor and Dentist Professions Act, women who qualified under the law to terminate the lives of their unborn babies could not do so.
However, Poland’s Ordo Iuris, a conservative legal group, pointed out that this recent anti-life regulation violates the 2010 Resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which stipulates that “no person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion, the performance of a human miscarriage, or euthanasia or any act which could cause the death of a human fetus or embryo, for any reason.”
Moreover, in its January 15, 1991 ruling (ref. U 8/90), the Polish Constitutional Court ruled that “freedom of conscience does not only mean the right to represent a certain worldview, but above all the right to act in accordance with one’s conscience, to be free from compulsion to act against one’s conscience.”
According to an article by Remix, Poland’s National Health Fund’s (NFZ) control department has been zealously organizing audits linked to abortion refusals under the aforementioned new pro-abortion requirement introduced by the current left-liberal government.
In October 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, the country’s highest court, decreed it was unconstitutional for women to opt for abortions in the case of fetal abnormalities, declaring that aborting babies with fetal abnormalities amounted to “eugenic practices.”
As per Ordo Iuris, apart from violating the Polish Constitution in terms of ensuring “freedom of conscience,” the recent government regulations to liberalize abortion laws threaten hospitals that refuse to perform abortions with a withdrawal of funds, thus driving pro-life doctors into a corner. This is because doctors who opt to preserve the lives of unborn children would face government reprisals in the form of financial penalties for the medical facilities where they work, eventually impacting the availability of health services for patients in need.
Evidently, the Tusk government, pursuing its anti-life ideologies, has stooped so low as to threaten to deny healthcare facilities funds to serve the very patients for whom these anti-life politicians allege to advocate.
Additionally, the leftist lie claiming that pro-life advocates endanger the lives of mothers in need of medical attention to save the lives of unborn babies must be repeatedly debunked and exposed.
As Ordo Iuris noted:
It is unjustified to use the term “abortion” in relation to medical management of very difficult clinical situations, which in Poland have been the cause of death of several mothers. The term is used consciously in public debate as a means of achieving political and ideological goals. In obstetrics, during complications of pregnancy or childbirth, a child sometimes dies amid procedures undertaken to save the mother. This is not an abortion, as such medical interventions are not intended to take the child’s life. Such practices therefore do not fall within the legal and medical realm of abortion. They are undertaken to save the endangered life of the mother and belong to the realm of medical necessity. The death of the child, if it occurs, is unintentional. Abortion is defined in reputable dictionaries as a procedure aimed at terminating a pregnancy at an early stage to prevent the birth of a living child. It is therefore inherently directed against the life of the child and is intended to kill [him or her], which is not the reality in cases of necessary medical measures performed to save the life of the pregnant woman.
Professor Bogdan Chazan, a gynecologist and obstetrician as well as the medical director of MaterCare International and Vice-President of the European Federation of Catholic Physicians Associations (FEAMC), referenced the Dublin Declaration to refute the false dichotomy between saving the life of a woman and killing her unborn child:
The Dublin Declaration states that the purposeful destruction of the unborn child is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. There is a fundamental difference between abortion and medically necessary treatment to save the mother’s life, even if such treatments result in the unintentional death of the child. In no way does putting a ban on abortion affect the ability to provide health care to pregnant women.
Under Poland’s current law, abortion is only permitted if the mother’s health or life is threatened by her unborn child or in cases of rape.