Abortions have come to an end at Specialist Hospital Pro-Familia in Rzeszów, Poland, after all the hospital’s gynecologists signed a conscience clause opting out of committing the procedure.
The decision affirms that abortion, the killing of an innocent child, is not health care, but a violation of the role of doctors to heal and not harm.
Abortion is illegal in Poland except to save a mother’s life, or in cases of rape or genetic abnormalities, although controversy arose on January 14, when midwife Agata Rejman exposed the hospital for committing abortions two years ago, Rzeszow News reports.
Hospital management threatened to sue Rejman if she did not retract her statements, but pro-lifers protested the hospital to support Rejman. The hospital also filed criminal and civil charges against two of the protesters for characterizing abortion as killing, thereby harming its reputation and business, though the criminal court cleared them of wrongdoing.
Now SHPF has ceased abortions, effectively ending the controversy, although hospital director Radoslaw Skiba denies the conscience signatures convinced management to change. Natalia Dueholm reported for LifeSiteNews:
The first reason for the change is associated with the 2015 decision of the Constitutional Court giving doctors the right to sign the conscience clause. Another reason is linked with the owners and experiences of a Pro-Familia sister hospital located in Łódź. Professor Dariusz Borowski, who owns the second Pro-Familia, admitted that “there were discussions on the subject. We showed which way would be just and brave.” Ultimately, Pro-Familia in Rzeszów followed the lead of her sister-hospital, which has a long and fruitful relationship with a local perinatal hospice run by Fundacja Gajusz.
Nevertheless, Polish pro-lifers are taking the case as a sign for hope. “One Pro-familia doctor thought back then that abortions should be performed in every hospital in Poland,” Mariusz Dzierżawski of Poland’s Right to Life Foundation noted, but “if the hospital most aggressive against pro-life activists can stop killing the unborn, then any and every hospital can and should do it. Only courage and perseverance are needed.”
