Poland’s government accused the country’s Roman Catholic Church yesterday of blackmail by threatening to excommunicate legislators who support a liberal law on in-vitro fertilization.

“The threats, attempts to pressure and blackmail are amazing,” the spokesman for Poland’s liberal government, Pawel Gras, told the Radio Zet commercial broadcaster.

In-vitro fertilization is widespread in majority Catholic Poland but not subject to legal regulation.

Several draft laws on the process are to be tabled in parliament this week, ranging from a total ban punishable by prison to the authorisation of IVF reimbursed by the state.

Chairman of the Episcopate’s expert group on bioethical issues, Archbishop Henryk Hoser, has warned legislators voting in favour of in-vitro fertilization they would be excommunicated from the Church.

“They will find themselves automatically outside the community of the Church,” he said in a recent interview. In a letter on Monday addressed to the President, Prime Minister and members of parliament, the Catholic bishops condemned IVF as “the little sister of eugenics”, used by authoritarian regimes of the past century for the so-called improvement of the genetic characteristics of humans.

“The Church has the right to articulate its opinion, but I never thought it would do so drastically,” said Mr Gras, the government spokesman.

He said the Church’s stern stance could see legislators voting in favour of IVF to demonstrate the separation of church and state.

“Instead of being blocked, work on the legislation could be accelerated and a law on IVF could be adopted prior to the end of the year,” he said.