The Polish Government has plans to register pregnant women.

At an informal meeting with journalists on September 11, the Minister of Health, Ewa Kopacz, declared that she had plans to establish a new department within the Ministry office - the Department on Mother and Child. This department will design a new social and health program concerning pregnant women - and it will be responsible for maintaining a registry of pregnant women.

If a woman agrees to join the program, her data will be registered in a "special system", to enable doctors and nurses to keep contact with her, stated Ms. Kopacz. Women participating in the program will have a chance to undertake additional medical examinations, and they will not wait long hours for a visit with the gynecologist.

That is how the Ministry of Health envisions its fight against illegal abortion. It wants to register pregnant women and afterwards to undertake control as to whether or not a woman gives birth to a child in the end. In Poland, abortion is legal only to save a woman's life or preserve her health.

If a woman participating in the program does not attend medical checks as previously agreed, it will be the responsibility of a midwife to establish contact with her, Minister Kopacz emphasized. 

"If we find out that a woman registered in the system is not yet pregnant before her pregnancy due date, it could mean that she has had a miscarriage or she has terminated her pregnancy," said Jakub Gołąb, a spokesman of the Ministry. "That way, we shall receive information about the scope of abortion underground in Poland." Gołąb claimed that the fight against underground or illegal abortion will be an indirect consequence of introducing the program. He could not say whether doctors would be obliged to report to the Ministry and submit all data related to women who declared they had undergone an abortion. We do know that all doctors will be given instructions by the Ministry, according to which - after confirming a woman's pregnancy - they will be obliged to record it in a special register. 

The program is set to start running in January of next year. But it is still an idea in need of elaboration. The new Department on Mother and Child is also supposed to deal with the monitoring of announcements in newspapers concerning illegal abortion. "These are hidden under expressions like: 'regaining menstruation,'" said the Minister of Health. "Our aim is to fight against all forms of illegal abortion," she declared.

Many groups have been shocked upon hearing of the Ministry's plans. Women's rights activists objected to the plan as a violation of privacy:

"Registration of pregnant women is a breach of a Constitutional right to privacy and in a way a comeback of totalitarian regime - said Agnieszka Graff from Feminoteka foundation. "That is an attack on women's rights to medical care, because the whole situation will result in women with unwanted pregnancies not visiting their doctors."

By way of protesting, the Polish feminists decided to send to the Ministry of Health tampons with a few drops of raspberry juice. "We would like to show Ms. Minister how grotesque the idea is. If a state wants to control our intimate sphere, here you go," said Graff.

Opponents of the Ministry's idea argue that there are other ways to counteract illegal abortion - there are police and prosecutor's offices. And putting pressure on pregnant women to register is an irrational solution.

The Ministry explains that through the registration process it wants to encourage future mothers to undergo regular medical checks. But others say that future mothers can take care of themselves and that type of state's assistance is not really necessary or helpful.

On the very next day, September 12, the Ministry's representative said that there would be no mandatory registration of pregnant women or control over women who are pregnant. He further stated that the discussion which followed on the news had been adversely interpreted by journalists. He emphasized that there would only be data collected on women who freely joined the program.

Let us hope this time that the news is properly interpreted and all pregnant women in Poland do not face the problem of registering with the government when the new Department on Mother and Child is set to implement its projects in January of next year.