Category: Poland

Abortion row child dies

 Polski Radio

The baby at the centre of a pro-life row that has divided Poles died on Wednesday just hours after the professor who refused to abort the child was informed he would be dismissed.

Marcin Dubienecki, lawyer of the child’s mother, confirmed that the baby – which had serious brain defects – had been born in Warsaw’s Bielanski Hospital on 30 June.

“On behalf of my client, I am passing on the information that the child ‘whose life was saved’ by Professor Chazan died at 8.35 pm [on Wednesday],” he told the TVN24 news channel.

“The child was in a very serious condition. “All of the arguments that the child should never have been born proved correct,” he claimed. [Full text]

Pro-life doctor who refused abortion to be sacked

 Polskie Radio

Warsaw’s mayor has announced that Prof. Chazan’s contract will be “terminated in accordance with the law,” after he refused a termination to a woman carrying a foetus with severe defects.

Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz announced on Wednesday the findings of a report into the Roman Catholic doctor’s activities at the Holy Family hospital in the Polish capital, after Chazan, who is director at the hospital, refused the woman an abortion – citing a ‘conscience clause’ – but then declined to refer the woman to another hospital or physician. [Full text]

Poland asks: should a doctor serve God, or patients?

Reuters

Marcin Goettig and Aneta Pomieczynska

(Reuters) – In April this year, a pregnant woman asked Professor Bogdan Chazan, director of Warsaw’s Holy Family Hospital, for an abortion because her own physician had diagnosed her unborn child with grave health problems.

Chazan sent the woman a letter saying he could not agree to an abortion in his hospital because of a “conflict of conscience,” and instead gave the woman the address of a hospice where, he said, the child could get palliative care once born.

The baby was born at a different hospital with, according to a doctor there, severe head and facial deformities and a brain that was not viable, conditions which the doctor said would result in the child’s death within a month or two. . .

. . . On Wednesday, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the mayor of the Polish capital, said she was firing Chazan from the hospital on the grounds that he did not have the right to refuse the abortion and did not inform the woman about the options for getting a termination. [Full text]

Polish conscience tested: the case of Professor Chazan

LifeSite News

Natalia Dueholm

WARSAW, Poland — The most recent case in Poland’s abortion wars will test the country’s conscience.

The case centers around Professor Bogdan Chazan, one of Poland’s top doctors and director of the Holy Family Hospital in Warsaw (Szpital im. Świętej Rodziny).  Chazan came under fire last month when he refused to perform an abortion on a deformed baby who had been conceived in vitro in a fertility clinic.  Instead of an abortion, Chazan offered medical advice for the mother, hospital care before, during, and after the pregnancy, and perinatal hospice care for the child.

Although Polish law permits abortion of sick babies until viability, it does not create the right to an abortion. It merely decriminalizes abortion for the doctor and the mother.  This particular pregnancy did not pose a danger to the woman’s health. Also, according to Polish law, any physician can invoke the country’s conscience clause, which ensures that no doctor or medical professional will ever be required to perform, or participate in, an abortion.  Nonetheless, Chazan’s hospital was fined 70,000 zloty (approximately $23,000) for his refusal. [Full text]

The doctors’ declaration of faith

The Economist

A.H.

THE scene had a melodramatic touch: two stone tablets with an engraved Declaration of Faith by Polish doctors who recognise “the primacy of God’s laws over human laws” in medicine were carried last month to a sanctuary in Częstochowa, in the south of Poland. The gesture was made out of gratitude for the canonisation of the Polish pope, John Paul II. It was the initiative of a physician and personal friend of the late pope, Wanda Półtawska.

The first 3,000 signatories of the declaration thereby announced that they will not violate the Ten Commandments by playing a part in abortion, birth control, in-vitro fertilisation or euthanasia. Abortion until the 25th week of pregnancy is legal in Poland if the mother’s life is in grave danger, the foetus is known to have severe birth defects or the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.

Poland has 377,000 doctors and nurses so the signatories represent barely 1% of the medical profession. And among them are many students, dozens of dentists, four balneologists and a dance therapist (number 1805 on the leaked list). . . . [Full text]