National Christian Union (ZChN), a fundamentalist Catholic party. The text can now be submitted to a vote in the Polish parliament, the Diet, at any time.
It prescribes two year prison sentences for the person considered responsible for an abortion. That is, the doctor, or in the case of a self-induced abortion, the woman. The use of certain forms of contraception which intervene after the fertilization of the egg, like the IUD or the
RU-486 pill, which prevent the fertilized egg from establishing itself in the uterus, is considered as an abortion, and would therefore be subject to the same penalties.
Total ban on abortion
The ban on abortion will be total, without any exceptions, even in cases when the woman's life is in danger, the fetus is deformed or the woman has become pregnant as a result of a rape. In order to remove any temptation, the proposed law prohibits pre-natal exams.
It is generally estimated that there are between 180,000 and 600,000 abortions performed in Poland every year. The daily Warsaw paper Gazeta Wyborcza wrote that the passage of this law could result in the imprisonment of 60,000 people in the first year of its enactment, which would amount to a doubling of Poland's prison population! More seriously, the lumping together of abortion and certain contraceptive measures, would, according to the liberal weekly Polityka, lead to police gynecological examinations in the tradition of the practices of Ceaucescu's sinister Securitate in Romania. The Catholic fundamentalists are ready to see this law passed at any price. "Under cover of a democratic debate we will see this law all the way through passage by the Diet" declared one of its supporters in the halls of the Diet. They enjoy the support of