Poland is one of the most religious countries in Europe, with around 87 per cent of the population identifying as Roman-Catholic.
But support for the church is waning amongst the younger generation. Just nine per cent of those aged 18 to 30 view the church in a positive light, according to a recent survey.
In response, many institutions are taking steps to ensure Poland’s Catholic identity and ideals remain intact.
One measure is an annual colouring competition that promotes a "pro-life" message and the heteronormative family model.
Magdalena Guziak-Nowak is the director of education for the Polish Association of Defenders of Human Life, which runs the competition.
The at-home arts competition is open to children as young as three. Source: SBS Dateline
“We want from the very beginning to raise children’s awareness about the value of human life and show how valuable family is,” Ms Guziak-Nowak told SBS Dateline.
“This is the idea behind this anti-abortion competition. These competitions show the beauty of life.”
The at-home arts competition is open to children as young as three, through to teenagers. Though it’s run by an external anti-abortion organisation, students earn extra credits towards their school certificate for entering.
“The most important thing for a child or a teenager is not to know what abortion is but to build a foundation... how beautiful family life is, and this is the basis on which we can build the rest.”
In October 2020, Poland’s constitutional tribunal ruled it is against the constitution to abort a pregnancy in cases of fetal abnormalities.
Fetal abnormalities were one of the few remaining legal reasons to have an abortion in Poland - rape, incest and if a mother's life is in danger are now the only exceptions to the country’s abortion legislation.
The ruling prompted thousands of Polish women and men to take to the streets in protest against the near-total ban on abortion. It pushed the issue to the top of the country’s political agenda.
Polish children weren’t sheltered from the unrest.
“This year there were more works about abortions than in the previous years. This is clearly caused by the legal changes which impacted society,” Ms Guziak-Nowak said.
In response to the mass protests, anti-abortion groups paid to erect thousands of billboards depicting a fetus in a heart shape on major highways throughout the country.
Polish gynaecologist Dr Maciej Jedrzejko is one of the few doctors that is outspoken about the changes to the abortion legislation. Source: SBS Dateline
Many of the children’s artworks submitted this year depicted similar images.
“I think it is just because what we saw in the Polish streets was the truth," Ms Guziak-Nowak said.
“There is a child in a mother’s uterus, not just a piece of mysterious assembly of cells, or jelly, or whatever we can call it. I think that this campaign definitely had an educational effect.”
Polish gynaecologist Dr Maciej Jedrzejko is one of the few doctors that is outspoken about the changes to the abortion legislation. He says “the government should never go between a doctor and parents” in cases of embryo pathological pregnancies.
"This is absolutely unpolitical problem, this is a medical problem," he told Dateline.
“If parents don’t want to wait until their fetus will be very big grown and they don’t want to watch his dying or they don’t want to watch his suffering, they should have a right to decide. Because a woman can not be a coffin for a baby.”
