WARSAW, Poland, April 19, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A former prime minister of Poland and former Communist party member has issued a formal apology to a doctor he had called a “psychopath” because of the doctor’s pro-life views.
Leszek Miller, former leader of the Democratic Left Alliance, called Dr. Bogdan Chazan “a religious psychopath who does not allow prenatal testing and forces women to give birth to children who are severely crippled and will soon die.” Miller accused Chazan of refusing to perform his duties as a doctor, and for making women suffer. He added that people like Chazan “are a threat to women’s lives.”
The Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture argued in a defamation suit that Miller’s words “undermined the practice of freedom of conscience for the doctors who run public hospitals in Poland.”
This verbal attack came in 2014 after a widely publicized story about a deformed baby who had been conceived in vitro in a fertility clinic. Chazan refused to kill the unborn child in his hospital and did not refer his mother for an abortion. Instead he offered medical advice for the mother, hospital care before, during and after the pregnancy, and perinatal hospice care for the child. This pregnancy did not pose a danger to the woman’s life or health. Nonetheless, Chazan, the director at Holy Family Hospital, was quickly fired and his hospital fined. His unwavering moral convictions caused a fury in the pro-abortion media and among some politicians.
Miller unjustly attacked the famous pro-life doctor in a radio interview and during a 2014 press conference in the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish Parliament. In the fall, Chazan, represented by lawyers Jerzy Kwaśniewski and Bartosz Lewandowski from Ordo Iuris, initiated a defamation lawsuit. At the time the case could not proceed since Miller was a member of Parliament and therefore was protected by immunity. However, when his party lost the election in 2015 Miller also lost his job as an MP, along with his immunity. The wheels of justice could finally turn. On April 11, 2016, the case was settled.
Miller agreed that what he had said was unjust and undeserved. He added that he had not meant to undermine the doctor’s good reputation nor his professional and scientific work. His apology was sent to the Polish Press Agency (PAP) and published in the printed version of the daily Rzeczpospolita.
As Bartosz Lewandowski from Ordo Iuris explained to LifeSiteNews, the Polish Constitution established limits to freedom of speech. “Dr. Chazan, as a renowned gynecologist, needs patients’ trust,” says Lewandowski. “Ex-Prime minister Miller’s words were unjust and untrue. Dr. Chazan was drastically and vulgarly attacked after using the conscience clause and refusing an abortion,“ Lewandowski concluded.
Chazan told PAP that he is completely satisfied with the apology.
Chazan also has sued another left-wing politician for defamation. In this case, former MP Piotr Ikonowicz has been less compliant and has tried to ignore the court. Finally he was escorted to court by the police in handcuffs. No verdict has been reached on the case yet.
Unfortunately, notwithstanding his legal victory, Chazan has not been reinstated as director of the Holy Family Hospital in Warsaw. Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the mayor of Warsaw who sacked him, refuses to budge despite demonstrations and petitions supporting the doctor. Gronkiewicz-Waltz’s zealous persecution of Chazan contrasts markedly with her inaction on the hospital’s current problem. Holy Family is implicated in the death of a baby born alive after a botched abortion. The screaming baby boy was left to die there without any medical help.
The medical personnel involved are under investigation.
Gronkiewicz-Waltz is a member of the Civic Platform, a party that refused to support the legal protection of unborn children. A civic bill completely banning abortion that would prevent a repeat of this baby boy’s tragedy will be up for vote in the Polish Parliament in a few months.