Abortion law in Poland (theses)

Filozofija i drustvo, 2012

The paper focuses on issues of development dimensions of Medical Law and its ongoing process of standardization and harmonization on one hand, versus the traditionally rooted and available principles of biomedical ethics, on the other. The collision of new legal institutes and the spread of human rights protections is evident. This paper follows the theory and practice of medical ethics and medical law. The theoretical aspect points out medical ethics as one of the sources of medical law. Legal theory makes a distinction between formal and autonomous sources of medical law. Even though ethics is morally much higher, law prevails because it has stronger sanctions and legal power. In its practical aspect, this paper gives examples of different situations of medical decision-making processes. Ethical rules are of the utmost relevance in the domain of confidentiality and options of medical treatment. But, in concrete medical procedures, where legal positions of patients are evidently ve...

Kultura i Edukacja

In Polish medical law, the conscience clause is understood as both a moral and legal norm which gives consent to selected medical professions (doctors, nurses, midwives, and laboratory technicians) to withdraw certain activities due to ethical objections. The explanation given for the conscience clause is not sufficient. There is no detailed information on the difference between compulsory and authorized benefits and the conditions for resignation from medical treatment. These problems not only lead to interpretational errors, but also to the abuse of law. Medical attorneys, among others, Andrzej Zoll, Mirosław Nesterowicz, Leszek Bosek and Eleonora Zielińska, present different opinions on the understanding of refusal to perform health care services by health care workers, and the lack of agreement leads to conflicts. In this article, I compare the views of ethicists and lawyers on the conscience clause. I present differences in the interpretation of medical law, and to all considerations I add my own opinion.

The fact that dictates of law and those of morality will often coincide is widely acceptable. However, the question whether law exists or should exist to impose one particular code of morality or not may receive many different responses. Following these two concepts over different cases and scenes in the health care sector leads to the conclusion that this question could not receive a curt answer. Law should be parallel to human morality to an extent. But, morality has a subjective dimension. The common content of morality within a community is the basis for the community's legal framework. Even when law does not impose morality directly, it may refer to morality indirectly, referring for example to morals or to morality, to good faith, to bona fide and the like. Arguments and examples in this article establish the opinion that law is asked to apply morality to an extent, but this should not be used to supplant communal norms, cultural or religious beliefs, mainly when these sides of morality are not contrary to the universally common morality.

Medicine, Law & Society

This article aims to analyze a proposed amendment of 2021 to the Polish Criminal Code relating to abortion. The starting point for the considered legal solutions is the equalization of criminal law protection of human life before and after birth. This means that a termination of pregnancy is to be regarded as homicide, with all its attendant consequences. This article analyzes the legal implications arising from the proposed amendments both in relation to pregnant women and other persons (doctors, relatives and even employers of pregnant women). The far-reaching repressiveness of the future anti-abortion law that is rarely found in the modern world is demonstrated. The analysis is complemented with an attempt to diagnose the social consequences of the proposed amendments using historical and criminological texts concerning such situations in the past, as well as on the basis of sociological observations of current social trends. The authors believe that the proposed law will prove t...

Ethics of Emerging Biotechnologies: From Educating the Young to Engineering Posthumans, 2018

The scope of the regulation of medical professions in Poland is relatively wide. On the one hand, it refers to the medical activity, which consists of the provision of health services; while on the other hand, it refers to competences appropriate for particular medical professions. In the Polish legal system, some medical professions benefit from corporate freedom. These occupations include: doctor, dentist, nurse, midwife, and-until recently-physiotherapist. The tasks of corporations in the medical professions are extensive and consist primarily in the pursuit of the profession of custody. Adherence to professional self-government means that a medical profession is self-reliant in the decision-making process and providing health care services. There seems to be a legitimate postulate of work to increase the scope of regulation of medical procedures. On the one hand, procedures will increase the safety of patients; on the other, they will increase the safety of people performing medical occupations.

Polish Journal of Surgery

Aim: The paper aims to establish the legal nature of guidelines in the Polish legal system and the possible formal consequences of introducing such guidelines (litigation, professional responsibility), as well as the practical implications concerning the method of treating patients. Methods: The analysis explains fundamental issues that largely determine the content of the study. The basic assumption is to analyze the legal nature of the prepared guidelines from the point of view of public law, i.e., the relations between the state, as the primary public law entity, and individual, private entities, such as natural persons, legal persons, or organizational units without legal personality, and more specifically, the relations between state authorities and medical professionals. Results and conclusion: 1) Treatment guidelines fall outside the scope of the universally applicable law subsystem. Therefore, they do not constitute sources of universally binding law. 2) Furthermore, the gui...

PubMed, 2015

Polish laws specify the parties responsible for lawful medical care in the availability of abortion differently than the Resolution of the Council of Europe. According to Polish regulations they include all Polish doctors while according to the Resolution, the state. Polish rules should not discriminate against anyone in connection with his religion or belief, even more so because the issue of abortion is an example of an unresolved ethical dispute. The number of lawful abortion in Poland does not exceed 1000 per year and can be carried out by only a few specialists contracted by the National Health Fund. Sufficient information and assistance should be provided to all pregnant women by the National Health Fund. The participation of all physicians in the informing process is not necessary, as evidenced by the lack of complaints to provide information on where in vitro fertilization treatment can be found - until recently only available when paid for by the individual and performed in much larger numbers than abortion. Entities performing this paid procedure made sure to provide information on their own. The rejection of the right to the conscientious objection clause by negating the right to refuse information may lead some to give up the profession or cause the termination of certain professionals on the basis of the professed worldview. Meanwhile, doctors are not allowed to be discriminated against on the basis of their conscience or religion.

Istoriya meditsiny, 2019

This article looks at the debate in the USSR in 1935-1936 on banning abortions. This episode of Soviet history has enormous heuristic potential for researchers studying the Soviet period. At first sight, the bill to ban abortions appears simply a matter of historical medical fact, based on which we can in many ways draw conclusions about the situation in healthcare in general, and in obstetrics and gynaecology in particular. However, this small-scale episode in the history of Soviet healthcare provides scope for substantial cross-disciplinary research prospects in fields such as anthropology, sociology, political science, and so on, significantly expanding the research horizons of the Soviet past. Our analysis of the abortion ban debate draws on two groups of sources. The first comprises documents of the highest Communist Party and government bodies, stored in the thematic files of the Soviet Politburo. Particular attention is paid to the notes and marginalia made by Stalin in the drafts of the law to ban abortions. Practically all the materials in this group have been officially declassified only comparatively recently, and now being studied for the first time. The second group of sources comprises letters from members of the Soviet public to the highest organs of government and to national and local periodicals. The letters present a wide range of opinions and observations on the bill to ban abortions. Comparing these two groups of sources has allowed us to become the first Russian researchers to study the development of ethical discourse, and show the history of the emergence of bioethical discourse, in the Soviet period.

Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, 2012