Polish City Has Funded 455 IVF Births Since Government Ended Subsidies
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Loading... - Odden Olger
- 29 May 2023
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The city of Łódź in Poland has provided funding for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments, resulting in the birth of 455 children over the past seven years. This initiative was undertaken by the city after the conservative national government cut off financing for IVF. The recently released statistics have sparked a fresh debate on IVF, with the opposition promising to reinstate government funding if they come into power after this year's elections. However, a member of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party criticized IVF, referring to it as the artificial "production of children."
In 2015, shortly after assuming power, the PiS government decided to terminate the IVF financing program that had been implemented by the previous administration two years earlier. Their justification was twofold: they claimed the program was too costly, and they also acknowledged significant ethical objections from a substantial portion of society.
Consequently, several major cities in Poland, whose local authorities were in opposition, took it upon themselves to provide funding for couples seeking IVF treatment. These cities included Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk, Łódź, Poznań, and Częstochowa.
Łódź has now disclosed that, throughout the duration of their seven-year program, approximately 1,300 couples have received financial support for IVF treatment, leading to the birth of 455 children.
Couples are eligible for subsidies of up to 5,000 zloty (€1,100) for a single round of treatment, and they can apply for up to three treatments. The city, which is the fourth largest in Poland, plans to allocate 1 million zloty this year for 200 treatments.
In contrast, a 40 million zloty program initiated by the PiS government to assist couples in conceiving without IVF resulted in 209 conceptions during a 15-month period spanning 2021 and 2022, according to TVN24, a broadcasting network.
Last year, the leading opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), which had introduced state funding for IVF during its tenure in power in 2013, launched a campaign to reinstate such funding at the national level. It aims to regain power as part of an opposition coalition following this year's elections.
However, the PiS party, currently leading in the polls but lacking sufficient support to ensure a continued parliamentary majority, remains staunchly opposed to IVF. One of its members of parliament, Barbara Bartuś, stated in a parliamentary session that IVF "is not a means of combating infertility; it is the creation of human beings."
Instead, the PiS government has focused on addressing Poland's declining population by providing incentives for couples to have more children, such as their prominent child benefit program. Nevertheless, these efforts have yielded limited success thus far, as Poland's birth rate, one of the lowest in Europe, continues to decline.
