The guidelines of the Minister of wellness of Isabella Lestins radically exceeded the projects proposed in the last 30 years by the pro-abortion communities to extend the availability of abortion in the Polish legal order. The Revolutionaryness of these solutions refers not only to the introduction of extra-statutory possibilities abortion for de facto psychosocial reasons until delivery, which was not foreseen by any of the draft laws prepared by the Left, but besides involves instrumental regulation of suitability by doctors of substantive knowledge, clinical competence, the right to verify the diagnosis and to consult another specialists. Donald Tusk's government abolishes the independency and professionalism of performing in Poland the profession of gynecologist and midwife according to medical cognition and clinical experience. The specialist doctor becomes an involuntary executive of political guidelines against his cognition and experience.
The limits of permitted state interference in the implementation of the medicinal process have clearly been breached, where political directives are higher than standards of medical procedure, individual work of the doctor and patient safety. Such an effort on the independency of the medical professions from current state policies and ideological goals of political parties should meet with extremist opposition from the medical community, however, which has been intimidated by the possible of the National wellness Fund breaking contracts with medicinal agents for refusing to execute abortion.
It is full justified to claim that Donald Tusk's Government is utilizing outright force against medical environments. The announced guidelines on the conditions for abortion straight hit medicine practice in line with the achievements of biomedical sciences and regardless of the dictatorship of political parties. It is so not only essential to defend the right to life of unborn children and well-being of women at hazard of abortion, but besides the independency of the medical profession, both in terms of the work of the conscience clause and the right to be guided by a doctor by medical cognition and clinical experience.
The guidelines of the Minister of wellness lead to a female who does not want to study on pregnancy, can take advice or even a psychiatric teleporad and get a certificate stating that the kid is simply a threat to her intellectual wellness due to, for example, possible adaptation difficulties. On the basis of specified certificates, unborn children can be killed until delivery. Additionally, the certificates are to be indisputable and hospitals will not be able to establish a medical consensus to verify the diagnosis. In the event of specified a certificate being presented, the infirmary is required to have an abortion immediately, under the threat of financial punishment or even a breach of the contract by the NFZ.
The medical community is protesting the guidelines of the Minister of wellness Isabella Hazelnuts due to their contradiction with Article 4 of the Medical Ethics Code: “In order to fulfill its tasks, the doctor should hold the freedom of professional activities, according to his conscience and modern medical knowledge”.
Referring to the guidelines, the president of the Chief Medical Council, Łukasz Jankowski, stated that "The issuance by politicians of any recommendations on medical procedures is not only a breach of competence, but a threat to the independency of therapeutic decisions. In any case, your doctor will be full liable for your current medical knowledge. act according to your own conscience by following the medical ethics codeIt’s okay. ”
The Chief Medical Council concluded that "The guidelines did not resolve all the doubts that arise during the patient's qualification to discontinue pregnancy and execute it, and even gave emergence to additional serious concerns from the medical community due to the proposition that the doctor performing the procedure had limited rights to consilium on this matter". The Council recalls that "The creation of guidelines for doctors is exclusively a domain of medical technological societies and technological bodies, while issued by the Minister of wellness can be perceived as an effort to exert force on the medical environmentIt’s okay. ”
It is besides worth mentioning the message of erstwhile president of the Constitutional Court, Prof. Andrzej Zoll, who stressed in his interview for RMF radio: "An abortion doctor must not be completely deprived of his or her subjectivity and of his or her medical knowledge. due to the fact that he can say that the certificate does not reflect the real state. To leave out this, already imposing sanctions erstwhile a doctor refuses to have an abortion due to the fact that he disagrees with the position of the individual issuing the certificate, that is unacceptable to me."
The guidelines of the Minister of wellness besides constitute a violation of the Constitution, whose Article 38 states that "Rzeczypospolita Polska provides everyone with legal protection of life". In its judgement of 28 May 1997 with the Constitutional Tribunal weighing constitutionally protected goods, it was clear that The life of a child, besides in the prenatal phase of development, is more valuable than freedom, wellness or mother's intellectual comfort.
Ombudsman, Prof. Marcin Wiązek in an interview with KAI there is no uncertainty that "In the light of the caselaw, there is no specified category as ‘right to abortion’ understood as freedom or human right. This is simply a certain concept present in political debate, but there is no direct support in the Constitution or global treaties. I would peculiarly like to point out the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The Court is clear that the European Convention on Human Rights does not give emergence to the right to abortion."
We must not forget that government actions are taking place against the will of society. The vast majority of Poles are in favour of legal protection of life. According to a CBOS survey "The relation of Poles to abortion 2023" only 18 percent of respondents support abortion "on request". The United Surveys (2024) survey shows that this is 24.7%.
The aim of the legislature's action in 1993 was to abolish the Stalinese abortion law of 1956 as regards the admissibility of abortion for alleged social reasons. Thus, the conditions laid down in the Act for legal abortion, as the legislator intended, did not contain any condition which, as part of the widest possible interpretation, would let the unborn kid to be killed at all phase of pregnancy due to the hazard of psychosocial parent welfare. The current government coalition does not in any way conceal the motives of its actions, i.e. the effort to introduce the anticipation of killing a kid for psychosocial reasons under a bill that abolished the social premise. It remains entirely uncontested that the intent of the government's action is not to precisely specify the laws, but to make the widest possible framework for their interpretation, which will let abortion to be carried out in a way contrary to the Constitutional Court's rulings on eugenic abortion and for alleged social reasons. This means that specified an order of application of the 1993 Law, which straight opposes the will and intent of the legislature and the decisions of the Constitutional Court, is being formulated.
The Polish Association of Defenders of Human Life so powerfully demands the Minister of wellness of Isabella Leschina to retreat "Guidelines on existing government on access to abortion" and the abandonment of similar, non-statutory actions in the future.
Wojciech Zięba
President of the Polish Life Defenders Association
Kraków, September 13, 2024.
