Abortion has been banned in Poland since 1932. Even though it is strictly banned with no exceptions, many women are still able to access abortions due to a lack of supervision and enforcement of abortion laws. This leaves the Polish priest Tomasz Kancelarczyk to do all the dirty work of trying to prevent such abortions from happening.
Kancelarczyk has taken great measures, some of which weren’t all that nice, to stop women from making this decision. This included playing ultrasounds of a baby’s heartbeat when it’s being aborted, harassing and intimidating couples who were at the doctor’s office for an abortion, and literally threatening teenage girls that he would tell their parents they’d been pregnant once they aborted a baby.
But Kancelarczyk soon realized that the most effective way he could tell pregnant women to not give up the baby was if he gave them his full support as single mothers. He began by giving them a place to stay, supermarket vouchers, baby clothes, toys, diapers, other child and mother necessities, and sometimes even a lawyer to take abusive or violent partners to court.
However, this is a pretty busy job considering the fact that he is the only one that does this and can only help so many people. The place Father Kancelarczyk opened is called Little Feet House, but this one house isn’t enough for the millions of women that need to be supported as single mothers.
One woman he has helped is named Beata, who, when she was pregnant with her second child, was avoided in disgust by the father of her child and even her family. With nothing left to do she tried to take some money from the bank, but they wouldn’t let her get a job, and when she tried to get a job, nobody would hire her because she was pregnant. With no home and no money or food, it was all hopeless for Beata.
That was, until Father Kancelarczyk showed up one day. As she describes, “One day I had nothing, the next day he shows up with all these things: furniture, clothes, diapers, I could even choose the color of my stroller.”
“This state completely abandons single mothers.” Beata says. What she says is true and stories such as hers show more should be done in Poland about single mothers and abortion rights.
Kancelarczyk has taken great measures, some of which weren’t all that nice, to stop women from making this decision. This included playing ultrasounds of a baby’s heartbeat when it’s being aborted, harassing and intimidating couples who were at the doctor’s office for an abortion, and literally threatening teenage girls that he would tell their parents they’d been pregnant once they aborted a baby.
But Kancelarczyk soon realized that the most effective way he could tell pregnant women to not give up the baby was if he gave them his full support as single mothers. He began by giving them a place to stay, supermarket vouchers, baby clothes, toys, diapers, other child and mother necessities, and sometimes even a lawyer to take abusive or violent partners to court.
However, this is a pretty busy job considering the fact that he is the only one that does this and can only help so many people. The place Father Kancelarczyk opened is called Little Feet House, but this one house isn’t enough for the millions of women that need to be supported as single mothers.
One woman he has helped is named Beata, who, when she was pregnant with her second child, was avoided in disgust by the father of her child and even her family. With nothing left to do she tried to take some money from the bank, but they wouldn’t let her get a job, and when she tried to get a job, nobody would hire her because she was pregnant. With no home and no money or food, it was all hopeless for Beata.
That was, until Father Kancelarczyk showed up one day. As she describes, “One day I had nothing, the next day he shows up with all these things: furniture, clothes, diapers, I could even choose the color of my stroller.”
“This state completely abandons single mothers.” Beata says. What she says is true and stories such as hers show more should be done in Poland about single mothers and abortion rights.