A Polish Priest’s War Against Abortion Focuses on Helping Single Mothers

SZCZECIN, Poland — The Polish state has banned abortion for 29 years, however that has executed little to forestall ladies from discovering entry to the process, leaving the Rev. Tomasz Kancelarczyk a busy man.

The Roman Catholic priest performs ultrasound audio of what he describes as fetal heartbeats in his sermons to dissuade ladies contemplating an abortion. He has threatened teenage ladies with telling their mother and father if they’ve an abortion. He hectored {couples} as they waited on the hospital for abortions on account of fetal abnormalities, which have been permitted till the regulation was additional tightened final yr.

However Father Kancelarczyk’s best software, he acknowledges, may very well be one thing the state has largely uncared for: serving to single moms by offering them with shelter, grocery store vouchers, child garments and, if want be, attorneys to go after violent companions.

“Typically I’m overwhelmed by the variety of these circumstances,” Father Kancelarczyk, 54, stated throughout a latest go to to his Little Toes Home, a shelter he runs in a close-by village for single ladies, some pregnant, some with kids, all with difficulties. “There ought to be 200 or 300 homes like that is Poland. There’s a vacuum.”

As strict abortion bans proliferate in some American states, Poland provides a laboratory, of kinds, for a way such bans ripple by means of societies. And one factor evident in Poland is that the state, if decided to cease abortions, is much less targeted on what comes afterward — a baby who wants assist and assist.

Poland’s authorities has among the area’s most beneficiant household welfare advantages, but it nonetheless provides solely minimal assist for single moms and fogeys of disabled kids, a lot the identical as within the elements of the USA the place abortion bans are being put in place.

“They name themselves pro-life, however they’re solely enthusiastic about ladies till they offer start,” stated Krystyna Kacpura, the president of the Federation for Girls and Household Planning, a Warsaw-based advocacy group that opposes the federal government ban. “There isn’t a systemic assist for moms in Poland, particularly moms of disabled kids.”

That is one cause the variety of abortions doesn’t seem to have truly dropped — abortions have merely been pushed underground or overseas. Whereas authorized abortions have dropped to about 1,000 a yr, abortion-rights activists estimate that 150,000 Polish ladies terminate pregnancies yearly, regardless of the ban, both utilizing abortion capsules or by touring overseas.

Poland’s fertility fee, at present at 1.3 kids per girl, is without doubt one of the lowest in Europe — half of what it was throughout Communist instances, when the nation had one of the crucial liberal abortion regimes on the planet.

The authorized ban, even die-hard anti-abortion warriors like Father Kancelarczyk concede, has made “no discernible distinction” to the numbers.

Providing meals, housing or a spot in little one care, then again, can generally make a distinction, and Father Kancelarczyk, who raises cash by means of donations, says proudly that such assist helps him “save” 40 pregnancies a yr.

One was that of Beata, a 36-year-old single mom who didn’t wish to disclose her full title for worry of stigma in her deeply Catholic group.

When she turned pregnant together with her second little one, she stated the daddy of the kid and her household shunned her. No financial institution would lend her cash as a result of she had no job. Nobody wished to rent her as a result of she was pregnant. And he or she was refused unemployment advantages on the grounds that she was “not employable.”

“The state fully abandons single moms,” she stated.

Then in the future, as she was sitting on the ground in her tiny unfurnished condo, Father Kancelarczyk, who was alerted by a buddy, referred to as, inspired her to maintain the newborn and provided assist.

“Sooner or later I had nothing,” Beata stated. “The following day he exhibits up with all this stuff: furnishings, garments, diapers. I might even select the colour of my stroller.”

9 years later, Beata works as an accountant and the son she selected to have, Michal, thrives at college.

For a lot of ladies, Father Kancelarczyk has turned out to be the one security web — although his charity comes with a model of Christian fervor that polarizes, a division on stark show in Szczecin.

Father Kancelarczyk’s gothic purple brick church towers straight reverse a liberal arts middle whose home windows are adorned with a row of black lightning bolts — the image of Poland’s abortion rights motion — and a poster proclaiming, “My physique, my alternative.”

Yearly, Father Kancelarczyk organizes Poland’s greatest anti-abortion march with hundreds departing from his church and dealing with off with counterprotesters throughout the road. Earlier than an area homosexual delight parade, he as soon as referred to as on his congregants to “disinfect the streets.”

He will get hate mail almost daily, he says, calling it “Devil’s work.”

Ms. Kacpura, the advocate who opposes the federal government ban, says that the shortage of state assist particularly for single moms has opened up area for individuals like Father Kancelarczyk to “indoctrinate” ladies who discover themselves in monetary and emotional misery.

Below Communism, little one care was free and most Polish workplaces had on-site services to encourage moms to hitch the work drive. However that system collapsed after 1989, whereas an emboldened Roman Catholic Church put its shoulder behind the 1993 abortion ban because it additionally rekindled a imaginative and prescient of ladies as moms and caregivers at house.

The nationalist and conservative Legislation and Justice Celebration, which was elected in 2015 on a pro-family platform, noticed alternative and handed one in every of Europe’s most beneficiant little one advantages packages. It was a revolution in Poland’s household coverage.

But it surely nonetheless lacks little one care, a precondition for moms to go to work, in addition to particular assist for the mother and father of disabled kids. Over the previous decade, teams of oldsters of disabled kids twice occupied the Polish Parliament to protest the shortage of state assist, in 2014 and 2018.

When somebody contacts Father Kancelarczyk a few girl considering abortion — “normally a girlfriend” — generally he calls the pregnant girl. When she doesn’t wish to discuss, he says he’ll engineer bumping into her and drive a dialog.

He additionally admonishes the fathers, waving ultrasound photographs within the faces of males seeking to go away their pregnant girlfriends. “If males behaved decently, ladies wouldn’t get abortions,” he stated.

Whereas abhorred by many, he’s admired within the spiritual communities the place he preaches.

Monika Niklas, a 42-year-old mom of two from Szczecin, first attended Mass with Father Kancelarczyk not lengthy after she had realized that her unborn child had Down syndrome. This was 10 years in the past, earlier than the ban included fetal abnormalities, and he or she had been considering an abortion. “I assumed my world was crumbling down,” she stated.

Throughout his service, Father Kancelarczyk had performed a video from his cellphone with the sound of what he described as a fetal heartbeat.

“It was so transferring,” Ms. Niklas recalled. “After the Mass, we went to speak to him, and informed him about our state of affairs.” He was one of many first individuals to inform her and her husband they have been going to make it and provided assist.

After her son Krzys was born, Ms. Niklas gave up on her profession as an architect to deal with him full time. Krzys, now 9, bought a spot in a faculty solely this fall, one instance of how authorities assist falls far wanting matching their wants.

She now advises anticipating mother and father of disabled kids, attempting to counsel them to maintain their infants — however with out sugarcoating it.

“I by no means simply inform them, ‘It is going to be all proper,’ as a result of will probably be laborious,” she stated. “However should you settle for that your life can be totally different from what you had envisaged, you will be very glad.”

“We have now these concepts about what our kids can be — a lawyer, a physician, an astronaut,” she added. “Krzys taught me about love.”

However in all her counsel, she stated, one factor barely options: the abortion ban.

“This has not impacted how individuals make choices,” she stated. “Those that wish to get an abortion do it anyway, solely overseas.”

Many ladies right here concurred.

Kasia, who additionally didn’t need her full title used as a result of the stigma that surrounds the problem, is one in every of 9 ladies at present dwelling at Father Kancelarczyk’s shelter. She was 23 when she turned pregnant. She stated her boyfriend had abused her — the police refused to intervene — after which left her. Her mom had kicked her out of the home. A buddy contacted an abortion clinic throughout the border in Germany.

“It isn’t tough,” she stated of getting an unlawful termination. “It’s a matter of getting a cellphone quantity.”

Ultimately, it was a near-miscarriage within the eighth week of her being pregnant that modified Kasia’s thoughts and persuaded her to hold out her being pregnant.

Father Kancelarczyk provided her not simply free room and board in his shelter however a lawyer, who took the previous boyfriend to court docket. He’s now serving a 10-month sentence and may lose custody.

“I really feel protected now,” Kasia stated.

Father Kancelarczyk says the variety of ladies referred to him as a result of they have been contemplating abortion didn’t improve when Poland’s ban was tightened for fetal abnormalities. However he nonetheless helps the ban.

“The regulation all the time has a normative impact,” he stated. “What’s permitted is perceived nearly as good, and what’s forbidden as dangerous.”