The issue of life and the protection of maternity have recently touched the Polish Church. The UN Commission for Human Rights has in fact condemned Poland for having too restrictive a legislation on abortion, which is only allowed in the case of rape or if the life of the mother is at risk. In its document, the UN Commission urges the Polish government to “liberalize its legislation and the practice of abortion” (Final Observations, 5 November 2004 no. 8). It also condemns the conscientious objection of doctors in this field, and invites the Polish government to furnish explanations on this clause. The response of the Church was given by Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, outgoing Rector of the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow. In his view, the UNO does not have the right to make interventions of this kind. “I wonder asks Pieronek from whom the United Nations received the mandate of indicating what is good and what is bad”. In his statement to the Polish daily ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’, Monsignor Pieronek also adds that the UN position is in any case debatable “because the faculty of choosing according to one’s own conscience in this field is one of the main human rights”. CESPAS (European Centre for studies on population, environment and development) has also intervened on the question, with a hard-hitting declaration: “The directive of the UN Commission on Human Rights is of unexampled gravity declared the Centre’s executive -. First, because it interferes in matters that, according to the UN Charter, form part of each country’s own jurisdiction. Second, because it raises abortion into a fundamental human right, something that finds no support in any of the official documents of the UNO. On the contrary, Article 6 of the International Accord on Civil and Political Rights establishes the right to life of each human being”. According to CESPAS, “it is therefore clear that individual Commissions and Agencies of the UNO are now in the hands of lobbies that try to force international accords to suit their own agenda and to insert new concepts that have nothing to do with the will of the people”.
