Despite attempts by the Church to intervene, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a law covering the costs of artificial insemination
Contrary to the appeal of the Roman Catholic Church, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a law covering the costs of artificial insemination. Duda approved the law's entry into force, as announced by the presidency on Saturday night, according to Kathpress. The new center-left coalition approved it in parliament, thus fulfilling one of its main electoral promises.
The president of the episcopal conference, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, asked the head of state to withdraw his signature from the law or submit it to the Constitutional Court. His letter to Duda said that in vitro fertilization was a “human experiment”. Prime Minister Donald Tusk's new government reacted with relief to Duda's signature. The coalition would not have had a three-fifths majority in the lower house of parliament to be able to overturn the president's negative vote.
At the end of November, at the request of a successful citizens' initiative, the Sejm (lower house) decided that couples unable to conceive would be reimbursed for the costs of artificial insemination from June 2024. In addition to the centrist coalition, left, 23 members of the right-wing conservative PiS, from whose ranks Duda comes, also voted in favor. The Conference of Bishops initially did not comment on the parliamentary vote.
“Intentionally Selective Abortion”
In the in vitro method, an egg previously removed from the woman is combined with the man's sperm in a test tube. Gadecki writes in his letter, which according to the Catholic News Agency (KNA) is dated Wednesday, that not all embryos created in this way are normally transferred to the woman's uterus. Some embryos would be declared “surplus” and destroyed or frozen. According to the Archbishop of Posen (Poznan), some of the embryos transferred to the uterus would also be destroyed according to “eugenic selection criteria”. “So we are dealing with intentional selective abortion in the context of methods that are supposed to promote life.”
Gadecki emphasized: “Infertility is a difficult test.” He advocated a “national program for real treatment of infertility.” Eliminating the medical or psychological causes of infertility would provide a much greater chance of producing a healthy child than artificial insemination. At the same time, Gadecki said that children conceived using the in vitro method deserve as much love and respect as those conceived naturally.
Co-governing Left Party co-president Robert Biedron sharply criticized Gadecki's letter. He declared: “The custom of the church deciding state policy is over.” (APA)