Delay is subject to change

The reason? A very specific one - the elections. For Law and Justice this time, abortion is a highly uncomfortable topic. For on the one hand, the fact is "women's anger," which, after several publicized cases of deaths in gynecological and obstetric wards that occurred due to delayed terminations of pregnancy, is still being felt, and it seems that all it takes is a spark to ignite. On the other - there are the "defenders of life" who go so far as to make absurd claims that "it wasn't why Christ died on the cross that Law and Justice won the elections for the third time" (former Law and Justice MP Anna Maria Siarkowska, now of the Confederation), accusing the ruling party of wanting to legalize abortion on demand because the Minister of Health and the Ombudsman for Patients' Rights recalled the premise of health protection, which includes mental health. On the third side - there is the Episcopate. The content of the pastoral letter that will be read in churches on the occasion of the Pope's Day, which this year - how convenient - falls on October 15, has just been published. The slogan of the letter is "Civilization of Life" and the content is easy to guess. And a team of experts of the Polish Bishops' Conference had already unequivocally spoken out against considering mental health risks as a premise for terminating a pregnancy - while making a whole list of abuses and depreciating psychiatry as a part of science. Moreover, a literal reading of this position indicates that the representatives of the KEP see only one situation in which abortion is permissible from the point of view of the Church - an immediate threat to the life of the mother, unless she makes a heroic decision to save the child, not her.

Nothing new, one might say. And yet - there are these women. Not only angry, but actually, to put it bluntly, though still culturally, pissed off. For several months, Law and Justice has been trying to pacify this anger with incantations about legal abortion in a health (including mental) emergency - contrary to the facts, when such procedures are performed by literally a handful of facilities in Poland, including the lion's share of a small county hospital in Lower Silesia, besieged by anti-abortion movement activists. The publication of the Team's recommendations a month before the elections would break the news - even if the recommendations didn't address the mental health premise, there is no doubt that the Health Minister would have heard questions on the matter (if, of course, journalists had a chance to ask them, because although Katarzyna Sójka has been minister for over a month, she hasn't created many opportunities to meet with the media, and that's a far-fetched euphemism). Will avoiding the topic pay off? Will it really be possible to preserve virtue and earn a ruble, as the Russian phraseology correctly sounds? Or will the "virtue to lose and a ruble not to be earned" scenario that Yaroslav Kaczynski spoke of a dozen years ago come true?