OFFICIAL STATEMENT
MATERCARE INTERNATIONAL
MEDIA RELEASE
June 12, 2014- MaterCare International stands firmly behind Dr. Bogdan Chazan, who is being told by the Polish Prime Minister to put the laws of the nation state above his Catholic faith.
Dr. Bogdan Chazan, a distinguished and celebrated obstetrician in Warsaw, has denied a request to abort an unborn child diagnosed with serious brain defects. An openly Catholic obstetrician, Dr. Chazan previously signed a “Declaration of Faith”, along with approximately 3,000 other physicians, which calls for the recognition of a Roman Catholic doctor’s rights to perform their duties in line with their religious convictions. Dr. Chazan argued that an abortion is against his faith and has come under siege from the Polish government and has been the victim of hateful attacks from fringe groups who oppose his rights as a Roman Catholic doctor.
Poland, a predominantly Catholic country, has remained in favour of positive alternatives to abortion for decades. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a statement on Tuesday, reducing doctors to servants of the nation state, “Regardless of what his conscience is telling him [the doctor] must carry out the law.”
MaterCare International’s Executive Director Dr. Robert Walley commented, ““The simple fact is that the majority of people who have ever lived, and quite probably a large majority of people today, see abortion as the execution of an innocent life. Demanding that citizens abandon their morality and conduct executions at the command of the government is the hallmark of the most totalitarian and sinister states in human history. We are saddened and outraged that with this measure against Professor Chazan, Poland seems intent on joining their ranks.”
Walley continued, “People of faith become doctors, because they want to help people. They want to offer healing and hope, not death and despair. We look to them to give us their best advice and opinions. If we say doctors cannot have opinions, that patients are allowed to dictate their wants to a physician, then what good is a doctor? Whether or not to do anything is a moral decision, and to point the finger at those with religious backgrounds is prejudice. We should value their morality and not punish them for it. Dr. Bogdan Chazan, like Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and countless others, equates this ‘procedure’ with murder, being forced by the law to commit murder is something we can all surely reject.”
Through his decades of service, Dr. Chazan, as a physician and professor of gynecology and obstetrics, has gained the respect of colleagues, his fellow staff, and his patients. He is a graduate of the Medical Academy in Warsaw. Previuosly, he worked as a professor at the National Research Institute of Mother and Child and was the national consultant in obstetrics and gynecology. Since 2004 he has served as a director of the Holy Family Hospital in Warsaw.
Since 1994, Dr. Bogdan Chazan he has been a member of the Government Population Commission and a member of the Committee of the Demography of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He continues to work as a strong proponent of natural family planning and Naprotechnology in Poland. He was nominated twice, in 2010 and 2012 for the award “Totus” for “courageous and consistent activities for the benefit of the civilization of life in the spirit of St. John Paul II’s teaching”. He is the chairman of the Council of MaterCare International and director of MaterCare Poland.
-Dr. Robert Walley, Executive Director of MaterCare International
MaterCare International is an organization of Catholic health professionals dedicated to the care of mothers and babies, both born and unborn, through new initiatives of service, training, research and education. www.MaterCare.org
Email: info@matercare.org Ph: 1-888-579-6472
https://www.facebook.com/matercare
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Polish Prime Minister Says Doctors Must Perform Abortions Despite Conscience
Objection
BY THADDEUS BAKLINSKI Thu Jun 12, 2014 14:40 EST
WARSAW, Poland, June 12, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Poland’s prime minister has declared that doctors’ opposition to abortion does not give them the right to refuse to kill a child in the womb, even under Poland’s strict abortion rules.
“Regardless of what his conscience is telling him, [a doctor] must carry out the law,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a June 10 statement, according to Polskie Radio.
“Every patient must be sure that … the doctor will perform all procedures in accordance with the law and in accordance with his duties,” Tusk said.
Poland’s laws only permit abortion if a woman’s life or health is jeopardized by the continuation of a pregnancy, if the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act such as rape, or if the unborn child is seriously malformed. The abortion must be carried out in the first 25 weeks of the pregnancy.
According to Polish law on conscience rights, doctors may still decline such abortions, but they are obliged to refer patients elsewhere.
Tusk’s statement came following the decision by obstetrician Bogdan Chazan, director of Holy Family Children’s Hospital in Warsaw, to refuse to grant an abortion to a woman who alleged that the child she was carrying had severe brain damage. The woman complained to the health ministry, which began a review of the case.
The prime minister said that, if prosecutors decide a law has been broken, then courts will have to rule on the issue.
Dr. Chazan is one of 3,000 Roman Catholic doctors, nurses, midwives, and medical students who have signed a “Doctors’ Declaration of Faith” saying that they will conduct their professional duties according to their religious beliefs.
The declaration states the doctors “recognize the primacy of God’s law over human law” and will work to “counter the imposed, anti-human ideologies of contemporary civilization.”
Dr. Wanda Półtawska, who initiated the “Declaration of Faith,” told Polskie Radio that she did so because some elements of modern medicine go against Catholic morals.
“Modern-day medicine represents evil,” said Półtawska. “The entire problem with abortion, artificial insemination, and finally, rejecting God as the Creator by performing in-vitro fertilization, poses a threat to the eternal life of all people who commit these deeds.”
Poland’s bishops have endorsed the “Doctors’ Declaration of Faith” and declared their support for Dr. Charzan and the other medical professionals who have signed the document.
“The aggression that has been directed against the doctors who were signatories of the declaration is not only incomprehensible, it is also unacceptable,” the bishops said in a statement issued following the June 11 plenary meeting of the Conference of the Polish Episcopate.
“It contradicts the constitutional principle of freedom of conscience and faith, and questions the inalienable right to conscientious objection in medical practice,” the bishops stated.
Moreover, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, attended the bishops’ plenary and voiced his support for Dr. Chazan.
“Developing theories today that the law of the state is above ethics and morals, or that it is a source of proper ethics, regardless of its wording, and that, for example, the state can compel a doctor – contrary to his conscience – to kill an unborn child, and to be threatened to be thrown out of work, are criminal and monstrous,” the cardinal said, according to Catholic journal Nasz Dziennik.
The cardinal noted that Dr. Chazan, citing a conflict of conscience, refused to abort the sick child.
“The doctor did not send the woman to another hospital,” Cardinal Müller pointed out, “but instead offered her and the child care during her pregnancy, childbirth and after childbirth, and also informed her of the availability of hospice care. For this Dr. Chazan was reported to the Commissioner of Professional Responsibility.”
Contact:Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk
Secretariat of the Prime Minister
Al. Ujazdowskie 1/3
00-583 Warsaw
Phone: +48 (22) 694 74 21
Fax: +48 (22) 694 70 53
sprm@kprm.gov.pl——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–Friday Jun 6 Vice Minister of Health Slawomir Neumann, commenting on Declaration of faith signed by 3 000 doctors in Poland stated: “We will take the appropriate measures, and if faith doesn’t permit somebody to be a doctor, he won’t be a doctor.”
The statement is an attempt to intimidate doctors and midwives, who don’t want to participate in killing unborn children, or in carrying out other, harmful procedures to patients. The Neumann threats grossly violate article 53 paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland which says clearly “Freedom of conscience and religion shall be ensured to everyone.”
Over 17 000 people have already signed petition demanding recalling the ViceMinister of Health.
SOURCE:
http://niezalezna.pl/56091-17-tys-osob-juz-po…http://www.topix.com/forum/world/poland/TTHRAJ9CPB3VHOCUR
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