Andrzej Duda, as announced by his colleagues, has signed the law on in vitro financing - the first to be passed by the parliament of the current term. The president did not listen to the appeal of the Chairman of the Polish Episcopate, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, to veto the bill or refer it to the Constitutional Court.
Law on in vitro funding with the president's signature
Published Dec. 16, 2023 16:39
Fot: Andrzej Hrechorowicz; prezydent.pl
The fact that Andrzej Duda is unlikely to veto the bill or otherwise halt its entry into force was discussed when the civic bill "Yes to in vitro," for which more than half a million signatures had already been collected in the previous term, was brought before the Sejm. Some Law and Justice parliamentarians - both in the Sejm and the Senate - actually supported the new regulation (although it must be admitted that it was a minority of the Law and Justice club).
Whether the law will ultimately end up in the Constitutional Court is not a foregone conclusion, by the way: a motion to that effect can be submitted at any time by a group of deputies or senators, and looking at the results of the votes, especially in the Sejm, there would be no problem collecting the appropriate number of signatures (a motion to the Constitutional Court can be submitted by a group of 50 deputies or 30 senators).
The law obliges the Minister of Health to prepare an in vitro infertility treatment program, which will be publicly financed to the tune of at least half a billion zlotys a year. The program will become operational on June 1, 2024.
Politicians of the October 15 Coalition did not hide their joy after the announcement of the President's decision on the bill, commenting hotly on social media. Citizens' bill on financing in vitro from the state budget voted and signed. This is a chance for happiness for thousands of Polish families! Step by step we are fulfilling our commitments," Deputy Prime Minister, head of the Ministry of Defense Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on Platform X. - President Duda signed the law on financing in vitro from the state budget. This is a great success for the nearly 500,000 Poles who supported the project with their signatures. Congratulations to the initiators and everyone thanks to whom this could come true! In vitro is happiness! - commented, in turn, the Speaker of the Senate Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska.
Radio Maryja, among others, spoke in a completely different tone. On the air, comments were made about the success of the civilization of death. Shortly before the president signed the bill, Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki urged him not to do so, citing Pope John Paul II's position on in vitro. - Human life is a fundamental value and inalienable good. It therefore demands absolute protection, and thus regardless of the period and quality of human life. The in vitro method, meanwhile, is an experimentation on the human being, its peculiar "production" constituting "a form of seizure of human life." - The hierarch wrote, citing an excerpt from the 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae, in which Pope John Paul II pointed out that artificial reproduction techniques are "morally unacceptable because they separate procreation from the truly human context of the conjugal act."
