thousands of Polish women protest after the death of a woman who could not have an abortion

Several thousand Polish women demonstrated in Warsaw, the Polish capital, on Wednesday June 14, to denounce the death of a pregnant woman, because, according to them, of the Polish anti-abortion law, among the most restrictive in Europe. The anti-abortion law theoretically allows doctors to perform an abortion if the woman’s life is in danger, but in practice it is so restrictive that doctors are afraid to do so.

Dorota Lalik, 33, died on May 24 in a hospital in Nowy Targ, southern Poland. She had been admitted there three days earlier when her water had just broken. She succumbed to sepsis brought on by the death in her womb of her 20-week-old fetus, according to a statement from her family. “The nurses told him to lie with his legs over his head to collect the waters”, Dorota Lalik’s husband told The Daily Gazeta Wyborcza. “No one suggested inducing a miscarriage to save Dorota, since the baby’s chances of survival were slim,” he added.

“They cause the death of young women, young mothers in Poland, because they are afraid of the consequences or have a particular vision of the world”Julia Cieslak, a 40-year-old protester, told AFP who carried a sign that read: “Stop killing us!” “Everything is political when you are a woman in Poland”lamented another demonstrator, Katarzyna Kotula, MP for the New Left. “Especially if you are a pregnant woman”, she added. Similar demonstrations took place in fifty cities and towns in Poland.