A people's initiative has been launched in Poland seeking to ban abortion without exceptions following a public uproar sparked by the much publicised botched abortion at a hospital in Warsaw in which a 24-week-old child, who had been diagnosed with Down Syndrome, was left unattended to die.
"The scream of this child was so traumatic for the personnel that they declared that they will never forget it," Polish reporter Anna Wiejak told the news outlet Church Militant.
A citizens' initiative, spearheaded by pro-life group Fundacja Pro (Pro Foundation), is seeking to collect the required 100,000 signatures for the proposed total ban on abortion to be considered for hearing in the country's legislature, Christian News reports.
"The proposed draft ensures that all children, before and after birth, have equal rights and protection of life and health," states the legal group Ordo Iuris, which wrote the proposed language of the citizens' bill, on its website.
"It removes the three existing circumstances under which an abortion is currently permitted. The initiative requires the state to support families raising handicapped children or children conceived in circumstances related to the commission of an offence."
Poland's Catholic bishops are urging lawmakers to support the proposed ban while setting up "programmes to ensure concrete help for parents of sick and handicapped children and those conceived through rape," the Catholic Herald reports.
They said a permanent ban on abortion will be a fitting occasion to mark the anniversary of their country's Christian conversion in AD 966.
"Each person's life is protected by the Fifth Commandment: Do not kill. So the attitude of Catholics is clear and unchanging," the Polish bishops' conference said in a March 30 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' statement said.
The proposed law mandates government to provide material assistance and care to families raising children who are seriously handicapped or who suffer from a life-threatening illness, as well as to mothers and their children when there are reasons to suspect that the pregnancy is a result of an unlawful act.
While physicians who violate the proposed law would face between three months and three years of imprisonment, the proposed legislation will not punish mothers who obtain an abortion illegally.
The existing regulation allows abortion in instances when the woman is impregnated in the commission of a crime, when the life and health of the mother is at risk, and for foetal handicaps and abnormalities up to 25 weeks of gestation. About 200 abortions are performed in the country yearly under these exceptions.
Feminists and abortion advocates have protested the move, as well as former first ladies Danuta Wałęsa, Jolanta Kwaśniewska and Anna Komorowska.
"Every abortion is a tragedy, but we should not aggravate women's tragedy by forcing them to give birth to children of rape or forcing them to risk their own life or health or that of their child," they wrote in an open letter.
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo told Polish Radio on March 31 that the statement "has clearly pointed us in the right direction ... Each of us must now decide according to conscience. But it will certainly be bad if such a sensitive, important issue becomes the object of a political struggle."
Over 90 percent of Polish citizens identify as Roman Catholic.
