Health Minister Ewa Kopacz with PM Donald Tusk as IVF bill could split Civic Platform in parliament; photo PAP

A government minister has said the threat by some bishops to excommunicate MPs who vote for state funding of IVF treatment in Poland is the equivalent of “blackmail” - though the ruling Civic Platform is not united on the legislation.

“It’s a pity that the Church does not assist [in creating legislation] but threatens and blackmails,” said minister without portfolio Pawel Gras.

The government is currently considering two rival bills which would introduce state funding for childless couples who want IVF treatment on the state.

The Gazeta Wyborcza daily writes that two thirds of the ruling party’s members are for the more liberal variant of the bill, drafted by MP Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, which would allow IVF for married as well as unmarried couples, and the freezing of surplus embryos without recourse to their destruction.

The remaining third of Civic Platform’s MPs are in favour of Jaroslaw Gowin’s more conservative project, which will permit married couples only to have IVF treatment and a ban on freezing of embryos altogether.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister  Donald Tusk is to answer this week a letter by bishops in which they call IVF the “younger sister of eugenics.”

“Eugenics was a method of interfering in genetics popular among the Nazis and it has nothing to do with in vitro,” said Pawel Gras.

A vote of conscience

In Gras’s opinion, every MP should vote according to his or her conscience.

Gras thinks that pressure that the Church puts on politicians will only speed up the process of implementing a bill on IVF. “I don’t think the bishops will manage to block the bill, which might be passed even this year,” said Gras.

Some MPs feel intimidated after Roman Catholic Church bishops, however, claims Stefan Niesiolowski, a deputy speaker in the lower house of parliament (Sejm).

Niesiolowski, a member of the ruling liberal-conservative Civic Platform, doubts that under such intimidating circumstances Parliament will pass a bill on IVF, though he is not afraid of excommunication himself.

 “I wouldn’t have enough courage to tell a married couple who suffer because they can’t have children that I can’t help them,” said the deputy speaker of parliament.

Church teaching

The opposition, conservative-national Law and Justice party, though, thinks that the bishops’ letter merely sets out the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

 “It’s a good letter which indicates the priorities of Christianity and the Church’s teachings are,” said Law and Justice MP Boleslaw Piecha.

The Deputy head of the Democratic Left Alliance Katarzyna Piekarska said that the bishops don’t understand that state funded IVF will bring happiness to families who cannot have children.

“In vitro is not directed against the family as  unit but enriches family ties and makes it possible for people to become mothers or fathers,” said Piekarska and added that bishops, because of their profession, can’t understand it because they rejected family happiness.

Polish MPs will debate the IVF bills on Friday. (mg/pg/jb)

Source: PAP, IAR