Poland is planning to introduce a centralized pregnancy registration system, which will force doctors to report all pregnancies and miscarriages to the government.
The proposed register will take effect in January 2022, which is introduced by Poland Almost total ban on abortion.
This has caused serious concern among women’s rights activists, who believe that in view of the abortion ban, the register may create legal difficulties for women who have aborted themselves.
The draft legislation is part of a broad project to update Poland’s medical information system.
“It’s about control, it’s about ensuring that pregnancy ends at birth,” Natalia Broniarczyk, activist from Aborcyjny Dream Team Tell Polish weekly Gazeta Wyborcza.
The plan triggered online protests. A social media initiative called “I want to politely report that I am not pregnant” encourages Polish women to email photos of their sanitary napkins, tampons and underwear to the Polish Ministry of Health.
The ministry strongly denies that the project is equivalent to centralized pregnancy registration. A spokesperson said that these changes are only part of an extensive digitalization project that will update data storage methods for multiple conditions, including allergies.
The spokesperson said that doctors always have pregnancy information, but before this information was stored on paper by the hospital, rather than centrally stored by the government.
After the Polish parliament passed the first reading with one vote on Thursday, the government proposed a bill to establish a “Institute of Family and Demographic Statistics”, and activists’ concerns about the register have greatly increased.
The goal of the institute is to monitor family policy, pass legislative opinions, and educate citizens on the “important role of the family in social order” and the importance of “cultural-social reproduction” in the context of marriage. The institute will have access to citizens’ personal data and the right to sue in the field of family law, which has raised concerns that it may be used to enforce the country’s strict abortion laws.
The project has aroused widespread criticism from Polish scholars and civil rights advocates.
“Maybe it’s called the’Red Center of Rachel and Leah’,” a feminist organization from Rhodes said in a statement. Instagram posts, Refer to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Story. In the novel, the Rachel and Leah Center is a female training institution designated as a “breeder” by the authoritarian regime.
The Demographic Research Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences issued a statement expressing its concern that “biological propaganda” will take precedence over the scientific research of the institute.
“The project aims to promote the traditional family model,” Adam Bodnar, a former Polish civil rights ombudsman, told the Polish News website Oko Publishing“It may also become a tool to deal with those who do not conform to this model, such as those who do not conform to heterosexual norms.”
