Hundreds of thousands lend their support to a citizens’ initiative aimed at protecting children from online pornography

Tomasz Daniluk, Ordo Iuris

• The collection of signatures for the Polish citizens’ legislative initiative “Stop the Pornography Drug” has come to an end.

• More than 200,000 signatures of citizens who supported the bill were submitted to the Polish Sejm on Friday.

• The initiative aims to limit children’s access to pornography on the Internet.

• The submission of the signatures was preceded by a press conference in front of the Sejm (the lower house of Parliament in Poland).

More about the Initiative

The Ordo Iuris Institute and the Center for Life and Family launched the citizens’ initiative in August and started to collect signatures in early October. It was supported by a number of other organizations, including the Coalition for Life and Family, the All-Polish Youth, the Mom and Dad Foundation, the Independence March Association, the Little Feet Foundation, the Foundation for Health Education and Psychotherapy, the Fr. Piotr Skarga Association, the Confederation of Women of the Republic of Poland, the Knights of John Paul II, and Catholic Action. Among the politicians supporting the initiative are Krzysztof Bosak, Marlena Maląg, Piotr Uściński, Bartłomiej Wróblewski, Barbara Socha, and Maria Kurowska. Others speaking in favor of the initiative are journalists such as Jan Pospieszalski, Rafał Ziemkiewicz, Tomasz Rowiński, and Zuzanna Dąbrowska-Pieczyńska, as well as television presenters Anna Popek and Rafał Patyra, and actress Patrycja Hurlak.

The citizens' bill aims to introduce effective mechanisms to verify the age of pornographic website users so that these sites are inaccessible to children. The owners of such websites would be obligated to comply. A competent authority would evaluate the effectiveness of the verification system. Websites that have not implemented appropriate solutions would be placed on a central register. Failure to comply with these obligations would result in the blocking by Polish Internet providers of the sites found in violation of the regulations and a ban on payment services in Poland for those sites.

Some 212,000 signatures of citizens who support the project were submitted to the Sejm on December 20. The submission of the signature cards was preceded by a press conference in front of the Polish Parliament.

Marcin Perłowski, the director of the Center for Life and Family, thanked all those involved in the collection of signatures:

“We are giving 212,000 gifts to Polish children and adolescents this Christmas. These gifts are signatures for the bill on the protection of children from access to pornography,” said Perłowski. “This is a watershed moment. This initiative can unite hundreds of thousands of Poles.”

Lidia Sankowska-Grabczuk, of the Coalition for Life and Family, stressed that the existing ban on providing pornography to minors is illusory, as enforcement is impossible in practice. Hence the need for additional regulations.

“These signatures are probably the best Christmas present we could prepare for our children, and not only for the children but for society as a whole,” said Sankowska-Grabczuk. “We have taken a big step toward fulfilling a huge dream we all have, for Poland to be closer to normality.”

Rafał Dorosiński, an attorney on the Ordo Iuris board of directors, reminded the destructive influence of pornography on young people.

“The project aims to ensure that this pornography pandemic that affects Polish children finally ends,” he said. “Justification presented for the project – i.e., almost 50 pages of research, data, and statistics – unequivocally shows that it is necessary to say ‘stop’ to this phenomenon, and this is the goal of our project.”

Meanwhile, attorney Jerzy Kwaśniewski, president of Ordo Iuris, pointed out that regulations limiting children’s access to pornography are already functioning effectively in other countries.

“Pornography is a powerful industry based on human harm,” said Kwaśniewski. “By taking this step, we are not only protecting children and young people from easy access to pornography – which, as we can see in statistics from places such as the US, leads to an 80 percent drop in pornography consumption – but we are also treating pornography similarly to such phenomena as alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs.”

The signatures for the bill were submitted to the Sejm Chancellery. The Speaker of the Sejm is now required to introduce the bill at the first reading in the Sejm. This must take place within three months of the date when the signatures were submitted.