After grassroots pro-lifers delivered nearly five times the required 100,000 petition signatures, the Polish Parliament could now begin work on a bill to ban abortion in the country.
Elective abortion is already illegal in Poland, but exceptions are made for rape, serious fetal defects, or threats to a mother’s life. The proposed law would eliminate those exceptions, and replace them with a legal regime that shows equal compassion to mother and child.
“We want to change the law and those barbarous procedures that do not belong in the 21st century,” pro-life attorney and ban author Jerzy Kwaśniewski said. “We want Poland to join the group of two-thirds of the world’s countries which protect the unborn better than us.”
For the so-called hard cases, Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture explained they were calling for a new government support system, “especially in the situation where the unborn child is sick, handicapped or was conceived in rape,” including prenatal hospice care.
Breitbart reports that the “initiative calls for increasing the maximum jail penalty for practitioners from two years to five. It also makes mothers liable, though judges could waive punishment in their case.” Most American pro-lifers oppose punishing women for abortions.
The Polish citizenry is divided on abortion, with 50 percent opposed and 45 percent in favor. Though close, it is a dramatic increase in pro-life sentiment from 1993, when just 30 percent of Poles opposed the ready availability of abortion.
