Bishops threaten Polish MPs over IVF funding

POLISH BISHOPS have threatened to excommunicate MPs who support state funding for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), a procedure they have compared to Nazi-era eugenics.

The intervention has prompted a strong reaction from the Polish government, accusing the clergy of unwanted interference in the country’s political affairs. The ruling Civic Platform (PO) party has prepared two draft bills on IVF which it says will bring Poland into line with the EU’s bioethics rules.

One Bill limits availability of state-subsidised IVF to married couples, the other extends it to all couples – increasing the level of state funding required.

The opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party has drafted its own Bill, promising prison sentences for doctors who perform IVF.

“The in-vitro method comes at great human cost (because) to give birth to one child, many humans suffer death at different stages of the medical process,” wrote Polish bishops, complaining that not all human eggs fertilised artificially are later implanted in the womb.

“IVF requires the ‘selection’ of embryos, which means killing them,” they wrote in a letter published by Reuters yesterday. “It is about selecting weaker human embryos deemed to be unfit.” The bishops called IVF the “little sister of eugenics”, alluding to spurious scientific research in Nazi Germany to breed a “master race”.

Government spokesman Pawel Gras described the intervention by bishops yesterday as an “astonishing attempt at . . . blackmail”.

“Judging by the reaction of MPs, I think the bishops will achieve exactly the opposite of what they intended – that they will fail to block work on the in-vitro Bill, which will probably be passed this year,” he told Polish radio.

IVF treatment is not clearly regulated in Poland. Clinics offer the procedure at a cost of up to 15,000 zlotys (€3,770) per treatment.