Saturday, November 06, 2021

'Her heart was beating too' - Poles protest against strict abortion law

WARSAW (Reuters) - Thousands of people gathered in cities across Poland on Saturday to protest against strict abortion laws after a pregnant woman's death reignited public debate on the issue in one of Europe's most devoutly Catholic countries.
© Reuters/DAWID ZUCHOWICZ People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Warsaw

A ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that abortion on the grounds of foetal defects contravened the constitution came into effect in January, triggering a near total ban on pregnancy terminations and widespread protests.

© Reuters/DAWID ZUCHOWICZ People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Warsaw

People holding candles and carrying banners saying 'not one more' and 'indifference is complicity', marched through dozens of towns and cities on Saturday, according to organisers, including Pszczyna, southern Poland, where the woman lived.

Activists say the death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy whose family said died of septic shock, was a result of the ruling.

Izabela went to hospital in Pszczyna in September after her waters broke, her family said. Scans had previously shown numerous defects in the foetus. But doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy while the foetus still had a heartbeat.

© Reuters/MARCIN STEPIEN People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Lodz

When a scan showed the foetus was dead, doctors decided to perform a Caesarean. The family's lawyer, Jolanta Budzowska, said Izabela's heart stopped on the way to the operating theatre and she died despite efforts to resuscitate her
.
© Reuters/KRZYSZTOF CWIK People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Wroclaw

'Her heart was beating too' read slogans on banners and in information shared by protest organisers.

"...the anti-abortion law in Poland kills Polish women. It is cruel, it is terrifying," a woman attending a protest in Pszczyna said in a comment aired by a private broadcaster TVN24.

"It is inhuman and I hope that this situation will contribute in some way, so that Polish women will not have to die," she added.

On Saturday, the news website Onet.pl published an interview with a husband of another woman who he claimed died in June in similar circumstances.

The government says the court ruling was not to blame for Izabela's death, rather an error by doctors. Poland's health minister Adam Niedzielski pledged to issue guidelines to make it clear when terminations were legal.

"I asked the National Consultant for Gynecology and Obstetrics to issue such guidelines...that will be unambiguous about the fact that the safety of a woman, in such a case as happened, is a reason to terminate the pregnancy," he told private radio RMF FM.

© Reuters/DAWID ZUCHOWICZ
 People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Warsaw

Poland's president proposed changing the law last year to make abortions possible in cases where the foetus was not viable. In September a draft bill introducing a total ban on abortion was submitted to parliament by a group of citizens.

"...let's finally change the law that kills women, deprives families of mothers, wives and sisters," Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bak, a left-wing lawmaker, was quoted as saying ahead of protests by news agency PAP.

(Reporting by Anna Koper; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

Poles protest mother's death blamed on abortion law




Poles protest mother's death blamed on abortion law'Not one more,
' shouted thousands of demonstrators in the capital Warsaw (AFP/Wojtek Radwanski)

Bernard OSSER
Sat, November 6, 2021, 

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in Warsaw and dozens of other Polish cities to denounce a nine-month-old abortion law blamed for claiming the life of a pregnant mother, organisers said.

The 30-year-old woman died of septicaemia in a Polish hospital after her 22-month-old foetus died in her womb, the family's lawyer Jolanta Budzowska tweeted.

She was, she added, the first victim of the near-total ban on abortion.

Izabela, married for 10 years and a mother of a nine-year-old child, agonisingly described her worsening condition in text messages made public since her death in late September.

"Not one more," shouted thousands of demonstrators in the capital Warsaw who protested outside the Constitutional Court and the health ministry.

"I am here to make sure that no woman's life is put at risk any more," Ewa Pietrzyk, a 40-year-old Warsaw resident, told AFP as she held a photo of Izabela. "The current legislation is killing women."

Women's rights groups said they organised similar demonstrations in around 70 other Polish towns and cities.

Izabela's family issued a statement saying doctors at the hospital in the southern town of Pszczyna "took a wait-and-see attitude," which it attributed to "the rules in effect limiting the possibility of a legal abortion".

The pregnant mother recalled the limbo she was in with a baby she said weighed 485 grammes, just over a one pound, according to text messages that were made public.

"For now, thanks to the law on abortion, I must remain lying down," she said.




- 'It's dreadful' -

"And there's nothing they can do. They will wait until (the baby) dies or until something starts, and if not, I can, great, expect septicaemia," Izabela wrote in a text to her mother.

"My fever is increasing. I hope that I don't have septicaemia, otherwise I will not make it," the pregnant mother said.

"It's dreadful. And I have to wait," she said.

According to the nationalist government running the country, the woman's death had nothing to do with the new law.

Two doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna were suspended after Izabela's death, and the town's prosecutors have launched an inquiry.

Poland's Constitutional Court last year sided with the Catholic country's populist right-wing government to rule that terminations over foetal defects were unconstitutional.

This resulted in a further tightening of already heavy restrictions on abortions, which came into effect in late January.

Rights group say that several thousand women have sought their help to seek abortions, more often that not abroad.

In October, a coalition of 14 rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said that as a result of the court ruling "women, girls, and all pregnant people have faced extreme barriers to accessing legal abortions".

The NGOs called on the European Commission to immediately implement a mechanism that could see Poland denied funds from Brussels for not respecting "EU values".

The Constitutional Court, which the EU says has had its independence stripped away, is currently at the centre of a separate row with Brussels after a controversial ruling earlier this month against the supremacy of the bloc's laws.

bo/lc/jj

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