Polish school textbook edited after critics interpreted that IVF babies are undeserving of love

A Polish school textbook has been recalled by the publisher and edited after critics interpreted a controversial passage to suggest that IVF babies are undeserving of love. 

The first edition of the book, entitled ‘History and Present’ caused controversy with the author’s description of human fertility treatment, such as IVF, as an “increasingly sophisticated method(s) of separating sex from love and fertility”. Allegedly, this leads to sex being treated as “entertainment and fertility as human production, one could say breeding” according to abc.net.au 

Whilst the textbook, which is part of a new government-backed curriculum due to be rolled out this year, never actually uses the term IVF (IN-vitro Fertilisation), many people interpreted this description of “increasingly sophisticated methods” as such, which led them to question “who will love the children thus produced” from these fertilisation methods. 

Consequently, the book’s publisher and author have agreed to re-edit the wording of this controversial passage, although the Polish Ministry of Education posed on social media that only someone “sick and mad with hatred” would have read the passage in this way. 

The textbook also has some questionable views on feminism and other liberal movements and many left-wing critics have suggested that it is part of the government’s “larger attempt to indoctrinate young people into conservative and nationalistic values.” 

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