Pregnant Woman’s Death Linked to Poland’s Near-Total Abortion Ban

A woman has died amid serious complications with her pregnancy in the first death linked to Poland’s near-total abortion ban, sparking widespread outrage and reigniting a fierce debate over reproductive rights in the Catholic country.

The 30-year-old woman, named only as Izabela, died of septic shock in her 22nd week of pregnancy in a hospital in Pszczyna, southern Poland.

According to her family’s lawyer, Jolanta Budzowska, doctors avoided performing a termination that could have potentially saved the woman’s life as a result of new abortion restrictions, making her death the first fatality to be linked to the country’s near-total abortion ban. The new rules, introduced amid huge controversy last year, outlawed terminations in the case of severe foetal deformities, which until then had been one of the few grounds for legal abortion in Poland, accounting for the vast majority of legal terminations in the country.

Following the ruling, abortions can only be legally obtained in cases where the pregnancy resulted from a crime, such as rape or incest, or if the woman’s life is at risk.

News of the death – which occurred in September, but was only made public on Friday – has sparked anger in Poland, leading to vigils in cities and an outcry on social media.

“We are absolutely heartbroken,” Polish reproductive rights activist Kinga Jelinska told VICE World News. “People are outraged by this. This should never have happened.”

Jelinska, co-founder of the Abortion Dream Team, said the “completely unnecessary and preventable” death was precisely what country’s abortion rights movement had been working to prevent – and had warned would happen as a result of the tough new abortion laws announced last October.

“These are the actual, concrete consequences of restrictive abortion laws,” she said.

“This is about real lives – not about the nuances of the law or theoretical situations any more. This is exactly how abortion restrictions affect our lives. They affect me, my sister, my mother, my daughter, everybody.”

READ: Poland’s abortion ban is already having a chilling effect

Budzowska, the lawyer for Izabela’s family, said the woman was hospitalised when her amniotic fluid broke in the 22nd week of the pregnancy. Doctors held back from draining the uterus until the death of the foetus – which had been diagnosed as having defects – sending the woman into septic shock.

Prosecutors are now investigating the death. In an interview on Tuesday with Polish newspaper Gazeta Prawna, Budzowska said while it was important to establish whether medical malpractice had occurred, the legal environment created by last year’s abortion ruling was a factor that “we cannot ignore.” She said that while abortions are legal in cases where the mother’s life is at risk, the ban on abortion in the case of foetal defects forces women to carry the pregnancy longer, increasing the risk to their health.

In the eyes of reproductive rights activists, there’s no question that the death was a result of the new law. “The doctors were waiting until the foetus did not have a heartbeat, and they were simply too late,” said Jelinska.

READ: ‘No more compromise’: Pro-choice protesters in Poland vow to fight on

In a statement on Tuesday, Pszczyna county hospital expressed its sympathy to the woman’s family and said medics had done everything in their power to save both her and her foetus, in line with Polish law.

“The only factor guiding the medical procedure was concern for the health and life of the patient and the foetus,” said the statement, noting that the question of terminating the pregnancy was “another issue.” 

“At this point it should only be emphasised that all medical decisions were made taking into account the legal provisions and standards of conduct in force in Poland.” 

Polish opposition politicians have also blamed the recent abortion restrictions for the woman’s death, saying they made doctors more wary of terminating pregnancies in the case of foetal defects that posed a risk to the mother’s health.

READ: Polish far-right forming “national guard” to protect churches during abortion protests 

Kamila Ferenc, lawyer for Poland’s Federation for Women and Family Planning, told VICE World News in November last year that the law was already having a chilling effect, with doctors refusing to perform abortions because of legal concerns.

But the ruling Law and Justice party – a nationalist-conservative party accused of stacking the court which introduced the ruling with its loyalists – said that the law still allowed for abortion in cases where the mother’s life was endangered, and that the new law had nothing to do with the death.

“The fact that people die is biology,” said PiS MP Marek Suski. “There are indeed medical errors, there are simply sick people and, unfortunately, sometimes women still die during childbirth.”

Radosław Fogiel, a spokesman for Law and Justice, said the government had not plans to change abortion laws as a result of the case.

But reproductive rights activist Jelinska said Izabela’s death – which was only beginning to resonate through Polish society – had the potential to reignite the huge protests that drew hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets in the wake of last year’s abortion ruling.

READ: ‘There is no turning back’: Polish women protesters undeterred by threat of far-right violence

“There’s a lot of anger and rage we feel over this, because this should never have happened,” she said. “Women are sharing their stories, and hopefully it leads to social change.”