Hitler featured on controversial anti-abortion poster in Poland

A controversy has erupted in Poland after an anti-abortion group, Fundacja Pro (Pro Foundation), decided to use an image of the German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, beside images of aborted fetuses, as part of a billboard campaign it recently launched.

Unveiled in the city of Poznan in Western Poland on March 1 the poster being used in the campaign, and expected to be seen on billboards in other Polish cities and on banners to be carried at pro-life demonstrations in Warsaw, Wroclaw and Katowice on March 7, has the following wording accompanying the controversial images:

Abortion for Poles: introduced by Hitler, 9 March, 1943

The Telegraph website, where the poster arousing such anger can be viewed, explains that the campaign is intended to remind Poles that their country was one of those in which Hitler introduced abortion as a means to control the population of races and nations he considered inferior. It adds that Poland, a country in which close to 90 percent of the population are Roman Catholics, has the strictest abortion laws within the European Union and any efforts to amend those laws are hotly debated. Writing on Salon Judy Mandelbaum suggests that public opinion in the Central European country is split evenly between those who want to liberalize the abortion laws and those who wish to retain them in their current form. However the New York Daily News/Reuters says that in fact a growing number of Poles, currently over 66 percent, oppose abortion, although there is no indication if they support the laws in their current form or a total ban on terminations. Justifying its use of the poster Fundacja Pro has issued a statement saying:

It was Hitler who first introduced abortion to Poland, and in several days it will be the anniversary of that event. In this context it is worth recalling the words of Pope John Paul II: History teaches us that democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism

Pope John Paul II was the Polish-born Pontiff who died in 2005 and Mariusz Dzierzawski, a member of the group invoking the Pope's name, has said of the campaign featuring the image of the German leader in World War Two:

It is our duty to fight for the rights of murdered children. Abortion is a crime and drawing such a parallel is absolutely justified

Speaking to one of Poland's largest newspapers, Gazeta Wyborcza, Mariusz Dzierzawski reportedly declared:

Hitler gave the right of abortion to women, including Poles, who were considered representatives of inferior races

But the editor of the weekly Catholic magazine Tygodnik Powszechny, which is produced in Krakow, the city in Southern Poland where Pope John Paul II once served as Archbishop, has spoken too with Gazeta Wyborcza. According to The News/Polskie Radio the editor, Rev. Adam Boniecki, does not approve of the poster being displayed on behalf of Fundacja Pro and has noted:

I’m afraid the campaign exceeds the limit of decency

Yet another person to have spoken to Gazeta Wyborcza regarding the poster is Magdalena Sroda,a professor of ethics with a special interest in gender issues. She is quoted as saying of the campaign by the anti-abortion group:

This is sick... Fascism, Stalinism... prohibited abortion, often on pain of death, so bans on abortion are strongly linked to totalitarianism

Salon points out that while Hitler wanted women he deemed sub-human to abort their babies, in Germany it was a different story. German women were awarded medals if they gave birth to four or more children. A brief summary of the Nazis attitude towards family life reveals that abortion was heavily restricted in Germany itself and terminations were considered to be "acts of sabotage against Germany's racial future". When International Women's Day comes along on Monday anti-abortion groups are expected to attempt in some way a disruption of demonstrations traditionally held by those wanting less restrictive abortion laws. The controversial poster is thought by some, the Telegraph states that Polish MP Elzbieta Streker-Dembinska is one such person, to have been unveiled to coincide with International Women's Day. With a few exceptions abortion is forbidden in Poland. In certain cases involving rape, incest, severe birth defects or a danger to the mother's life it is permitted. Figures quoted by Salon indicate that only 300 legal abortions took place in Poland in 2009. However it is thought that as many as 180,000 illegal "backstreet" abortions may have taken place. Poland saw approximately six million of its civilians (one fifth of the country's population) killed in World War Two, a vast majority by the Nazis. Half or more of that total were Jews murdered during the Holocaust.