The city of Poznań is offering support to women carrying, or who have given birth to, foetuses diagnosed with severe birth defects. Such women are banned from terminating their pregnancies under a recent Constitutional Tribunal ruling that outlaws almost all legal legal abortions in Poland.
In a scheme launched today, opposition-controlled Poznań – Poland’s fifth-largest city – is providing psychological and legal assistance funded from the municipal budget to women who find themselves in such a situation.
“We know that help for parents affected by problems concerning severe birth defects is very much needed,” said Jędrzej Solarski, the deputy mayor. “The recent legislative changes have strongly highlighted diverse expectations and attitudes.”
The legal support the city is offering includes information on prenatal testing, benefits for parents of sick children, patients’ rights, maternity and paternity leave, and labour law. People interested in receiving the support can register for it online.
The city says that the psychological consultations, from which the partners of pregnant women or fathers of new-born babies can also benefit, will be adapted to the individual situation. They will be offered online, by telephone or in person at the local Family Initiatives Centre.
“I know that every parent who has to face up to a diagnosis of irreversible severe defects of their child experiences their own anxieties and dilemmas,” said Solarski. “As a city we have been following a pro-family policy for years, and that is why we want to support residents in these very difficult moments too.”
Magdalena Pietrusik-Adamska, director of Poznań city hall’s health and social affairs department, hopes that the programme, which will run until at least the end of 2021, will provide “real support” to parents in a difficult situation.
“We based our planning of the range of support on identifying the challenges faced by parents finding out that the child whose birth they are awaiting has an incurable illness,” she said. “Receiving information about fatal defects for many parents is a moment when joy drastically changes into tragedy.”
Poznań mayor Jacek Jaśkowiak, from centrist opposition party Civic Platform (PO), has attended and supported the mass protests against the anti-abortion ruling. “The Constitutional Tribunal is a tool [for the government] to introduce changes not accepted by a large part of society by force,” he wrote last year.
Poland’s ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) has supported the banning of what it calls “eugenic abortions”. October’s ruling came as the result of a request to the Constitutional Tribunal made by over 100 MPs, mainly from PiS.
Since then, PiS figures have called for a support package to be introduced to help women those foetuses are diagnosed with defects. However, the justice ministry drew controversy last month when its spokeswomen suggested that this could include providing women a “separate room” with the “chance to have a cry”.
Meanwhile, the effects of the ruling are already beginning to be felt. According to Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Poznań medical university hospital has had to cancel several planned terminations since 27 January, when the ruling entered into force. Prenatal testing has also decreased around Poland.
Organisations helping Polish women to go abroad for an abortion have been much busier in recent months, according to a survey conducted by the newspaper a month after the publication of the ruling.
Abortion without Borders supported 522 Polish women in January this year, compared to 228 in the same month in 2020. And the Abortion Support Network funded more than three times the number of procedures in January and February than the total from the first quarter of last year, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna reports.
Main image credit: Jakub Hałun/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
