IVF for married couples only, says Polish ‘liberal’

Jaroslaw Gowin, from what commentators misleadingly refer to as the ‘liberal’ Civic Platform, told Radio Zet today that only married couples should have access to the wonders of the IVF procedure.

Why? Well, Govin, who is on the bioethics parliamentary committee looking into IVF treatment in Poland, told Radio Zet:

"Only a mother and a father are capable of giving a child a proper upbringing. Most dysfunctional children, including victims of paedophilia, are born out of wedlock.”

Oh, really? What a berk.

Govin was refering to the bill introduced by his own government which does not discriminate against married couples being able to get the treatment.

The IVF issue became front page news last November after Health Minister Ewa Kopacz announced plans of reimbursing couples from the state budget. One in five couples have trouble conceiving here, and the demand for IVF is growing

The opposition Law and Justice (PiS), alongside Catholic organizations and other usual suspects have opposed the state paying for the procedure and oppose IVF in general, of course. Newspaper articles have been written accusing women who get medical assistance to get pregnant as ‘immoral’. Men are reduced to being ‘sperm donors’.

Maria Środoń from MaterCare International, which describes itself as an association of Catholic Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says:

The mother is just reduced to virtually a breeding animal. Likewise, IVF dehumanizes the sperm donor. He is required to achieve arousal in a clinic closet with the aid of pornography.

Blimey! Women as ‘breeding animals’. Men being forced to use pornography to get off in hospital clinics! Call Radio Maryja – and you had better be quick!

Despite opposition from the usual quarters, IVF is legal in Poland – its just that the state refuses to pay for it. Clinics have been performing the procedure since 1987.

It’s also becoming a booming market among foreigners coming to Poland to conceive, as the price of treatment, say for a British couple, is much less in one of the forty clinics here than in London, for instance.

The government has drawn up a bill on IVF regulating the procedure but is almost certain to back down on funding IVF from state coffers. So childless couples who can’t conceive the normal way better be well off. Poorer couples will just have to do without.

It’s one thing to oppose IVF from a religious viewpoint – but to stoop to the pathetic arguments used by Jaroslaw Govin, that kids born out of marriage will somehow be more at risk from child molestation, etc, etc, is just pathetic. And let’s stop the labeling of the current governing party as ‘liberal’. Civic Platform is populated by atavistic political recidivists, like many political parties in Poland. Period.