Church, State and
POLAND
LAST JUNE, a little before the elections which led to the fall of the PZPR (Communist Party) government, a team of experts of the Polish episcopate, supported by 76 deputies of the Polish parliament - 68 of them men - introduced a bill "in defence of the unborn child" through the vote of a deputy of the PZKS
(Polish Social Catholic Union). This proposed the abolition of the 1956 law and the pure and simple banning of abortion, with a three year prison sentence for any woman or doctor infringing the law. Reaction to this was swift. For the first time since the establishment of the People's Republic of Poland,
Polish women came onto the streets to defend what they considered as a right, against all those who intended to deny it them.
JAQUELINE HEINEN
N THE DEBATE which has taken place throughout the media, the most extreme points of view have been expressed. While the Catholic
"that the era of infanticide is finally
, newspapers linked to the PZPR reacted with headlines like "No to pres-
"Perhaps women could be asked their opinion?", and "We want to decide
As to the representatives of Solidarnosc, after an initial declaration of Wale-
"something must be done to stop people killing one another", they sought above all to dodge the debate "so as not to make it a political issue in the
Among the innumerable women - often practicing Catholics — who have written to the newspapers to protest against what they saw as an interference with their private life, very many must have felt a certain confusion in noting that the only voices to defend their interests in the matter were those of the representatives and allies of the PZPR.
From discussions that we have had with women workers and students?, it is apparent that the majority of women directly concerned by the law believe that they should have the right to decide. However, they consider that abortion is an extreme solution, and the majority rule it out for themselves. Yet the abortion rate is very much higher in Poland than elsewhere.
How can the contradictions between declarations of intention and reality be inter-
16 preted? What motivates these women
International Viewpoint #180 • March 12, 1990 who, de facto, more frequently have recourse to abortion than to efficient contraception to avoid an unwanted pregnan-
"Do you want an abortion?" a gynecologist asks a pregnant woman come to consult him, before even knowing the reason for her visit. This is not an anecdote circulated by the bigots, true story told by women favourable to abortion rights — and who, in this case, had no intention of having an abortion. It illustrates well the manner in which abortion, far from being seen as a last recourse, serves as simply another means of contraception — and is regarded as such not only by women, but by a part of
Whereas estimates on the number of abortions prior to the adoption of the law run between 400 and 500,000 a year, the official figures put the annual number at around 140 to 160,000 until the beginning of the 1980s and claim the figure has fallen since then. But these figures have little to do with reality, and besides it is easier for the authorities to "err" when only a limited proportion of abortions — those carried out in hospitals and medical offices — are officially registered. For their part, the majority of private gynecologists avoid declaring them for tax reasons. Moreover, given the moral pressure exercised by church and society, most women prefer to see private practitioners to ensure the secret is kept — whatever the price it costs them (50 to 100% of an average monthly salary).
visit private doctors, it is not solely because of a concern for privacy. It is also because they have no desire to find themselves dumped in a corridor, with a doctor who does not hide his displeasure at having to put off a delicate obstetrical operation to give priority to a pregnant patient who cannot wait any longer for an abortion. Right or wrong, most of the women interviewed feel a private consultancy to be more medically reliable than a hospital even in the case of complications. "My private doctor has given me a telephone number where I can contact him at any time, whereas everyone knows well what happens to those who are abandoned for hours in their corner of the hospital, with nobody to look after them", said one worker from a Lodz enterprise.
### Doctors lack necessary materials
In hospital, as in the private consultancies, interruptions of pregnancy generally take the form of dilation and curettage (usually in the eleventh or twelfth week), being hardly ever used. Doctors are familiar enough with the latter method. But they lack adequate materials, as with the head of the clinic at Cracow, or are sceptical about the efficiency of the method, as with one practitioner from Lodz (who did not specify on what experience she based her assessment). As for the women, they have for the most part never heard of the method "Me, I know vaguely what it is because I have read something about it in a detective novel in English" said one of them. When doctors are asked if women are informed of the consequences of an abortion in the twelfth week rather than the sixth or seventh, it is not uncommon to hear the reply that this aspect of the question does not concern them and that there are advisory services for that purpose. Hardly surprising, then, if the proportion of side-effects due to abortions is particularly high in Poland. Here again, there are no reliable figures. The Church brandishes the figure of 50% of cases of sterility, of premature births, of miscarriage, and so 1. For the political context in which this debate took place, see /V 165, June 12, 1989, 2. Survey carried out from August to October 1989 in the context of an assignment of the CNRS, jointly with Anna Matuchniak, member of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Lodz.
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
recent years, reception conditions in the hospitals. This This tendency has with the degradation of grown stronger in explains the gap between the official sta- tistics and the estimates of specialists of between 500,000 and 700,000 abortions women's right to abortion annually over the past 15 years. In other words, the estimate is of almost as many interruptions of pregnancy as of births each year (587,700 births in 1988). But it would be wrong to stress the ques tion of quantity without mentioning the problem of quality. If women prefer to
TO THE POLISH MOTHER
March 12, 1990• #180 International Viewpoint on amongst women who have terminated their first pregnancy, without ever citing its sources. Numerous doctors reneat these figures without batting an eyelid. Yet nobody poses seriously the problem of what measures to take to resolve this
To pose the problem of abortion is also to pose the problem of contraception. In this respect also the situation is by no means rosy. Not only are the majority of contraceptives insufficiently available, but the quality of the few products available leaves much to be desired, without mentioning the total absence of education on the subject in schools.
After a professor of obstetrics from Nowa Huta 3 had solemnly told us that it was possible to find all the contraceptives you needed in the chemists and that his town had a multiplicity of advisory services where women could go to consult without queuing, we decided to see ourselves. Result; two of the three advisory services in the area we visited were closed through lack of personnel, and in the third, the queue which had formed would have meant several hours of waiting for the later arrivals.
Moreover, one alone of the chemists visited had in stock an IUD of Polish make (in one size, for women having already had at least two children) - the same make as that which a Warsaw gynecologist had told us he had stopped prefor his patients, given the frequency of the complications resulting from its use. For the rest - nothing. No pill, no condom, no diaphragm, no pessary, nothing...The same experience repeated itself in Cracow and Lodz. In Warsaw, one single chemist in the whole of the town had the pill in stock. But the make varied from one week to the other. "How can I prescribe one type of pill to a patient when I know she will be unable to get it two times in succession?" Moreover, neither the minipill nor the "morning after" pill are available, and the pills of Polish make are little used by women, because they are very high in hormones. The sole place where it is possible to procure contraceptives of good quality (of foreign manufacture with some regularity is at Pewex*, in exchange for dollars. Even there the choice is limited to pills and IUDs (the latter costing around half of an average salary. For the youth or for adults who only have sexual relations very irregularly, the situation is one of have acquired a certain populariy, but the contract of importation for the Yugoslav product which could still be found two years ago has been stopped under the pretext that a Polish doctor was ready to produce another...which has still not appeared. Sometimes it is possible to find condoms in the 'Ruch" kiosks but an IIPF inquiry has shown that their quality left much to be desired — whereas the western, and even Chinese or Korean, products are resistant to 1.5 liters of water, the limit for the Polish product is 300 milliliters...Hardly astonishing then that Poland is one of the countries where people have recourse to the least effective methods of prevention, despite the growing proportion of couples (more than 80%) who say they are convinced of the usefulness of contraception. In 1977 a comprehensive survey by GUS indicated that more than 70% of Polish couples used exclusively so-called "natural methods" sanctioned by the Church (rhythm method, temperature) and to coitus interruptus, whereas the proportion of women using the pill and the IUD was respectively 7% and 1.6%. Recently, the recourse to "natural methods" because of the aggressive campaigns of the Church. However, the role of Catholic propaganda is not the sole explanation in this instance. It is, on the contrary, in the combined action of Church and State that the origin of the present situation can be
"It would be correct to say development of the government's information policy as well as the educational measures in the matter of family planning and birth control in the course of the last 15 years have led straight to ignorance's
This judgment of a very critical demographer, attacking the hypocrisy of the state bases itself on observation of the regression which has taken place in this respect in the policy of the Polish regime.
POLAND
In the 1950s and 60s efforts were made to improve information on the existing contraceptives and their diffusion, to publish whilst at the same time the Society for Planned Pregnancy was created - which subsequently became the Society for Family Development (TRR).
But from the end of the 1970s, this activity ceased almost completely. The TRR had only 12 consultation centres in the whole country and enjoyed very limited financial aid. Government censorship even attacked its publications, which were deemed "immoral" and "obscene".
Catholics and Communists agree on sexuality
Mikolaj Kozakiewicz, one of the leading figures of the TRR, emphasizes for his part that puritanism was a constant trait of Polish Communism and "that its partisans were in every way comparable to those of the Church in their position on matters of sexuality, even if they were diametrically opposed to them in other areas A recent example of this was the pulping in 1987 of a sex education manual - the first of its kind for decades — aimed at students of 17-18 years old. After 500,000 copies had been printed, it was promptly withdrawn from circulation under the pressure of Catholic circles, horrified by the presence of two (very chaste) drawings showing two adolescents making love. To this day. the Ministry of Education still has no plans to produce another.
Enabling individuals to become conscious of their sexuality and to control it has always been the last concern of the successive teams of bureaucrats in power. Not only have the contraceptives introduced with powerful propaganda in the 1950s been long superseded, but since the end of the 1960s, the production of diaphragms and spermicides has been cut by almost 90%, that of condoms by 50%, the IUDs introduced in 1970 are eight times less numerous today, and the pill is produced in the same quantities as ten years ago...As for the plans for the training of nurses, psychologists and social workers in the field of sex education and contraception, they have never been applied. In a big state hospital in Nowa Huta, there are on the contrary posters covered with slogans against abortion and photos of bloody foetuses, which we found in the corridors of the gynecology department. The only one which spoke of contracep3. A working class town linked to the steel complex 4. Shops created to make up for the shortcomings of the official system, where luxury articles, and all sorts of basic necessities which cannot be found on the mar5. Mark Okolski, "Abortion and Contraception in Poland", in "Studies in Family Planning", no. 11, 6. "Histoire et politique des lois sur le planning familial en Pologne" in "Le planning familial en Europe la dimension des droits humains", IPPF, Paris 1985, p. 17
International Viewpoint #180 • March 12, 1990
POLAND tion advocated "natural" methods.
The state bears then a very responsibility for the situation created in the field of abortion and contraception; "When the government neglects family planning and there is an acute shortage of contraceptives, efficient methods are rarely used, even in social groups enjoying a high standard of living. tions, the more a woman is educated, the more she tries to avoid an unwanted child, and the more she will have recourse to the only available method of birth control -
In fact, it was solely demographic preoccupations which led the Polish state to care about family planning. In this sense, the accusations of the Church that the
Communists only adopted the 1956 law and its 1959 amendments for this reason are well founded. Following the antinationalist policy of Gomulka, it was the demographers who relaunched the debate on abortion at the end of the 1960s, using alarmist language on the lowering of the birth rate and the aging of the population.
When Gierek acceded to power with the covert support of the Church in 1970, it implemented an accelerated development programme that entailed a policy encouraging more births and the eulogizing of large families.
### Jaruzelski government discourages high birth-rate
The media as much as the Church then presented mothers of eight and of twelve children as "heroic mothers"
course persisted until the end of the 1970s.
On the other hand, when the ascendant demographic wave of 1982-83 began to worry the Jaruzelski government, the latter adopted a policy of discouraging high birth rates (reflected by, amongst other things, the granting of new subsidies to the TRR). The contempt for the interests of women evident in these successive and contradictory "policies" was reflected in the paternalism of a PZPR deputy (a doctor), a member of Parliament elected in
June 1989 who presented himself to us as a "defender of women". Certainly, he was opposed to the Church's proposed legislation, but his principal worry was that all this should not make waves; "We must avoid all this noise, these demonstrations...it is necessary to let the parliamentarians handle this affair. The discussion must take place calmly, among specialists...". In other words, among men (women represent only 8% of deputies) and on this point, the priests would not contradict
For a long time, it is above all at the level of the parishes that the anti-abortion activity of the Catholic church has been centred (in the Sunday sermons, in the obligatory courses of preparation for marriage, and so on). The campaign speeded 18 up in 1980-81, through a press campaign, launching a great offensive on the theme of the right to life and the abolition of the 1956 law. Certain groups within Solidarnosc, like that of the Szcecin Academy of Medicine, adopted platforms of demands around these themes.
The December 13 coup d'état put a brake on this campaign, without noticeably diminishing the activities of the several anti-abortion groups which already or have developed such as "The Protection of the Unborn Child", "Gaudum Vitae", "SOS Family", "Yes to Life" and so on. These groups intervene at a number of levels, ranging from "distress telephones" to proselytism in the hospitals, passing through aid to single mothers and battered women, "sex education" courses for young couples, the publication of brochures on the use of "natural" methods, on the sacred character of marriage, and so on. One of the characteristics of the situation today is that the initiative in the field of birth control falls to the Church to a much greater extent than the state. All the Catholic parishes advertise the times of courses on "preparing to live as a couple" (as well as inevitable "exhibition" horrors on abortion), whereas the state institutions are silent on the question. One of the women staffing a "distress telephone" (the number of which was prominently displayed at the entrance to every Lodz hospital as well as on the bus shelters and other public places) explained to us that she had 204 "little children" to her credit - in other words, the babies (most often those born to single mothers) that she had "saved" from abortion thanks to her powers of conviction.
Nurses inform anti-abortion
Another, who insisted on the "nonviolent" action of her group ("Gaudium
Vitae"), told us that one of her activities consisted of contacting pregnant women the day they came to hospital for an abortion (thanks to the nurses who informed her!) and showing them photos of "murdered" foetuses to encourage them to keep their baby... As to the content of the argument employed, it can easily be ima-
For some decades, the Church played on the argument of the declining birth rate. In the course of the last decade, it has extended this theme and hardened its tone, and quotations like the following can now be found in the Catholic press;
very conservative figure of 500,000 abortions a year on average is accepted, this means that, in the 32 years that the law has been in force, Poland has lost 16 million children! The essential question from this is the following; is this simply infanticide or should it not rather be seen as genocide? (...) Hitler has been dead a long time now, but we, thanks to this "progressive" and "humanitarian" law, are advancing along the road that he would have wished us to". The demagogic words of a journalist short of good copy? Hardly, when several secular and religious "experts", meeting in 1988 under the auspices of the parliamentary commission charged with discussing an eventual revision of the law, almost identical phrases. An exgynecologist did not hesitate to affirm that surveys in certain regions revealed a rate of abortions 17 times higher in 1967 than had been the case ten years before. Mothers lives to be sacrificed to foetuses
A representative of the Episcopate charcontraceptives "instruments of death". Others insisted on the necessary sacrifice of the life of the mother in order to save that of the foetus. One of the more fanatical members of the parliamentary commission responded as follows to arguments about the weight of public opinion in the affair; "The law cannot be founded on public opinion, when the former for a number of reasons often turns out to be immoral (...) There are many areas where it is preferable not to ask the opinion of the society".
We found all these arguments in the interviews we conducted with representatives of Church circles or militants of the "pro-life" movement, who were prepared to employ an eclectic range of justifications for their position - the "nonecological" (sic) character of abortion is very much in fashion in the polemic developed by the protectors of the rights
As to the social and economic effects of unwanted pregnancies, that is not their problem. Even women pregnant with a child known to be disabled or abnormal have no excuse in their eyes, for "human life is a supreme good". Their intransigence in relation to contraception is as firm as that in relation to abortion. If some have reservations about the position of the
Church prohibiting all "non-natural" contraception, very many among them share the point of view expressed by a priest on television, who proposed the banning of the sale of IUDs, "when they have an abortive effect" 8
When we emphasized to our interviewees that living conditions housing in particular) are a decisive factor in the decisions taken by women — even relig ious women - on whether or not to have a child, they dismissed the argument contemptuously. "Women who are not in agreement with the Church are not Catholics". And the supreme argument; "If they don't want their child, they have only to give it away or put it in a children's home!". Without dwelling on the con7. Marek Okolski, op. cit. p. 273. 8. He did not respond clearly to the question posed by a feminist who asked him if his proposition also envisaged the jailing for three years of women using the TUD.
March 12, 1990 • #180 International Viewpoint tempt such phrases imply for women who are regarded simply as wombs, this response appears all the more scandalous in the context of the enormous obstacles put to adoption in Poland, and bearing in mind the conditions which we had witnessed in the childrens' homes, overworking in conditions of extreme priva crowded, with underpaid personnel tion. As to the problem of non-Catholic women unconvinced by a morality to which they do not adhere, the response was simple and "naive"; "But the position of the Church is just and good for everybody, since it is moral!". Confronted with this discourse, the representatives of the PZPR and the secular organizations supposedly defending the right to abortion adopt, it must be said, an all the more defensive attitude, and it is not to them that women can look for a genuine defence of their interests.
The hundreds, and then the thousands of women who demonstrated in the street, when the anti-abortion legislation was announced, the success of the picket organized by feminists and the League of Women in front of Parliament are a sign that something is of which expected, which has led women, for the first time, to firmly say no to a policy made in their name that takes no account of their aspirations. This is not to overestimate the breadth of a movement which is only in its infancy and which will meet all the more obstacles in its development inasmuch as young women workers show very clear tendencies of withdrawing into the world of the family?. But this reaction nonetheless bears witness to the beginning of a raising of consciousness in relation to the contradiction which Polish women find themselves placed in, being expected at the same time to "work like a man" and take care of almost all household tasks and the education of children in a situation of unprecedented economic crisis.
In themselves, the very partial surveys made in the Spring of 1989 have nothing cheerful about them. They indicate a clearly more backward attitude amongst adolescents (only 20% for the right to abortion) than amongst adults (53%), undoubtedly due to the direct influence of the proselytism of the Church among the younger generation. The gap is deepening particularly between younger and older women. The attitudes of students have more in common with the latter - without doubt because very many of them have already experienced maternity and the everyday problems it brings. For our part, and contrary to our discussions in
Church circles or with the intelligentsia, we did not meet a single woman amongst the 30 women workers we interviewed in the enterprises who was favourable to the Church-sponsored legislation. Like the letters published in the newspapers (perarbitrarily selected by boards more or less linked to the PZPR), they are for the most part scandalized at the idea that they could be imprisoned for having an abortion. Most demand the right - for their sister, their colleague or their neighbor if not for themselves — to decide on the matter (on this, the men are clearly more nuanced). To the question of whether the Church appears to them to have a decisive influence in the behaviour of women in the matter of contraception and abortion, by far the most frequent reply is; no.
In justifying an act which they say they would otherwise condemn, they speak of the difficulties of everyday life; child more, how is it possible, with these prices, these hours spent in the queues!". They evoke above all the problems of housing; "I don't know how my daughters are going to find anywhere to stay, if their have an abortion were taken away...". The state "which does nothing in the area of contraception" is abundantly criticized, as are the doctors, don't tell us, who suggest nothing", and who "demand payment even when they don't carry out the abortion themselves, so that you can have a hospital bed". More than one attacks the priests "who have no idea of what it means to support a family in today's conditions", who usually have a maid to manage their household, "who have money, cars and apartments all for themselves". Nearly all declared themselves convinced that an increase in of contraception would diminish the rate of abortions.
POLAND
Yet these are the same women when asked if they use modern contraceptives, reply "no, because in my case it isn't necessary". What do they mean by this? That their husband "knows how to control himself or that they manage with the rhythm method. Have they had abortions? Yes, in more than 50% of cases, and often several times... Some say that they prefer "to sin once and have an abortion rather than to sin all the time and use contraceptives". But very many are simply not conscious of the contradictions they express. Rare are those who explicitly relate their practices to the material shortages in the domain of contraception. This indicates the depth of the influence of the retrogressive ideas diffused by the Church... It indicates also remains hidden of the violence they exert having recourse to abortion. Evidently, the absence until then of any autonomous womens' movement in the political field counts for very much in the situation described. The League of Women, affiliated to the PZPR, certainly reacted at the time when the bill was introduced and organized the sending of petitions to parliament; but it acted late, following protests from its rank and file members. Without being as discredited as the party, it is not for all that a credible organization. That is why a lot will depend on the little feminist groups which began to organize at the time of the Spring demonstrations. Some of them have been interviewed by the press and have appeared in debates on the television. Last October, they officially created the Polish Feminist Association, and, at the request of NOW (the American feminist organization), organized on November 12 of last year an action in support of American women who demonstrated on that day against threats to abortion rights in the USA.
These first steps need to be supported, for the capacity of this movement to take off will depend in part on the solidarity it receives from feminist groups in other countries. 1 * THE Polish Feminist Association can be contacted at; Polskie Stowarzyszenie Feministyczne, c/o Bozena Uminska, ul. Mickiewicza 23 m. 39, Warsaw. 9. On this, see Jacqueline Heinen, "Femmes l'emploi", IRESCO, Paris 1989.
Challenging sexual exploitation