The death of a pregnant Polish woman has reignited debate over abortion in one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic countries, with activists claiming she would still be alive if abortion was not illegal.
When a Constitutional Tribunal ruling from October 2020 that terminating pregnancies with foetal defects was unconstitutional went into effect in January this year, effectively eliminating the most common case for legal abortion, tens of thousands of Poles took to the streets to protest.
Izabela, a 30-year-old pregnant woman in her 22nd week who died of septic shock after doctors waited for her unborn baby’s heart to stop beating, is the first woman to die as a result of the ruling.
The government claims that it was not the ruling that caused her death, but rather a medical error.
Izabela was admitted to the hospital in September after her waters broke,her family said. The foetus had previously been found to have a number of defects on scans.
Doctors at a hospital in Pszczyna, in southern Poland, decided to perform a Caesarean section after a scan revealed that the foetus was dead. Izabela’s heart stopped on the way to the operating room and she died despite the attempts to resuscitate her, the family’s lawyer, Jolanta Budzowska stated.
Budzowska has filed a lawsuit over Izabela’s treatment, accusing doctors of malpractice, but she also described her death as ‘a result of the verdict.’
The Pszczyna County Hospital said on its website that it shared the grief of all those affected by Izabela’s death, particularly her family.
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