For those close to her, Agnieszka T. is the latest victim of the law almost completely banning abortion in Poland. This 37-year-old woman, mother of three children, died on Tuesday January 25 in a hospital in Czestochowa (south of the country), reports the Guardian. In a message posted on Facebook, her family says she succumbed to sepsis, after being denied termination of pregnancy for several days. Since the entry into force of a very restrictive law a year ago, toAbortion is prohibited in Poland, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life or health of the mother is considered to be in danger.
Pregnant with twins, Agnieszka was hospitalized on December 21 for vomiting and abdominal pain. One of the fetuses died two days later, but doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy. “The choice was made to wait because there was a chance to save the other fetus”, the hospital said in a statement, quoted by the Polish site Onet. The young woman had to wait another week for the heart of the second fetus to stop beating before the doctors agreed to intervene. However, it took two days for the drugs supposed to trigger a miscarriage to take effect, according to the hospital in Czestochowa.
Agnieszka’s health condition, which had already deteriorated, steadily worsened in the following days. On January 23, she went into cardiac arrest but was able to be revived. Transported to nearby hospital Blachownia, she died two days later. “Caregivers took all necessary measures to save the patient”, defends the first establishment that treated her, stating that the young person had tested positive for Covid-19 on January 23. Her death, however, aroused the indignation of the opposition and feminist associations, which announced a demonstration on Wednesday in front of the Constitutional Court in Warsaw. According to the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, the prosecutor’s office Czestochowa opened an investigation and requested an autopsy of the young woman’s body.
Agnieszka’s death comes a few months after that, in September, of a 22-week pregnant woman. Izabela died of septic shock after doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy, as her waters broke, dooming her fetus. Her family had called her the first victim of the abortion ban, saying doctors had adopted a wait-and-see attitude under the new legal provisions.
Human rights organizations ruled in a joint statement released on Wednesday that the law which came into force a year earlier had “had a devastating impact on the lives of women”. The text “has increased the extreme barriers faced by women seeking access to abortion, and has had tragic consequences for many of them and their families”, believe these NGOs, explaining that Polish women are now forced to carry non-viable pregnancies to term.