Thousands Protest in Poland Demanding Liberalized Abortion Law After Death Of Pregnant Woman

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oi-PTI

Poles demanding a liberalisation of the abortion law protested in Warsaw and other Polish cities on Wednesday after a woman who was five months pregnant died of sepsis, the latest such death since a tightening of Poland’s abortion law.

The protesters vented their fury against the ruling party, Law and Justice, or PiS, over several deaths in maternity wards in the past couple of years. The cases involved hospitals that refused to terminate pregnancies due to the presence of a fetal heartbeat even when the women were in grave danger.

“PiS kills,” said a sign at the protest in Warsaw, where hundreds gathered around a monument to the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. “Mom, I am afraid for my future,” said another.

The 33-year-old woman died last month in the John Paul II hospital in Nowy Targ in southern Poland. It is a hospital in a deeply conservative region of the mostly Catholic nation. The hospital contains relics of the late Polish pope and Polish media have reported that it never performs abortions on principle.

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The woman, Dorota Lalik, arrived there after her waters broke and was told to lie with her legs up, as the medics hoped her fluids would be reconstituted. She developed sepsis and died three days later on May 24.

Under the current law, women have the right to abortion only in cases of rape or incest or if there is a threat to their life or health. Government authorities have stressed this week that the law was, therefore, not the cause of the woman’s death.

They stressed that women have a right to a legal abortion in such cases and that the hospital violated her right to a legal abortion.

“Such perinatal deaths also took place in the times of the Civic Platform,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Wednesday, referring to the centrist opposition party that held power before his right-wing party took over in 2015.

Even before Morawiecki’s Law and Justice party took power, Poland’s abortion law was among the most restrictive in Europe.

Women’s rights advocates argue that the current law and the overall conservative climate have had a chilling effect. They say doctors are putting women’s lives at risk as they prioritise saving fetuses over women, either for ideological reasons or fearing legal consequences for themselves.

The government and anti-abortions groups accuse the pro-choice side of politicising the tragedies unfairly.

Several women have now died after the constitutional court ruled in 2020 that women could no longer terminate pregnancies in cases of severe fetal deformities.

Critics of the current laws also argue that another problem is doctors refusing to perform abortions on grounds of their moral conscience.

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The liberal Gazeta Wyborcza daily wrote on Wednesday that the so-called conscience clause was being used not only by individual doctors, but even by entire health care facilities, including the one where Lalik died.

“The institution of the conscience clause, since it leads to death, must be abolished,” the paper argued.

A left-wing lawmaker called for parliament to stand and observe a moment of silence Tuesday in honour of the deceased woman. Lawmakers belonging to the right-wing ruling party did not stand.