Reproductive rights activists in Poland, where abortion legislation is among the strictest in Europe, have a transparent message to their American counterparts: it will be a long fight. And some other people will die unnecessarily.
In this predominantly Catholic Eastern European country, where a far-right ruling party rules, bans on legal abortion are strikingly similar to those in U. S. states. The U. S. government has embraced the Supreme Court’s dramatic dismantling of part of a century of abortion rights in the United States.
This was not the case in Polonia. Il decades ago, especially in the 1970s, when much of Europe had stricter abortion laws, the availability of the procedure made this country a destination for those seeking to end unwanted pregnancies.
However, after the country got rid of communist rule in the 1990s, an intense crusade through a devout government—Pope John Paul II, born 30 miles from this southern city of cathedrals, crucifixes, and stained glass—resulted in an immediate reversal of maximum abortion. rights.
But even here, it changes.
“We need this child,” said Basia, a very pregnant 24-year-old woman walking on a cloudy day with her husband next to a green park on the outskirts of Krakow. But he didn’t need his full call to be used, because he knew that what he would say next would be anathema to many enjoyed.
If she had become pregnant while her husband was finishing graduate school and the two were coping with his meager salary, she said, she would most likely have asked for an abortion. He nodded seriously.
The fight against abortion fits perfectly into the conservative-nationalist program of the Law and Justice party, which came into force in 2015. Since then, he has led what critics call a radical attack on Poland’s rule of law and judicial independence, drawing strength from a traditionalist electorate whose worldview would be out of step with that of much of Red America.
While the party was in power, restrictions were inexorably tightened and, until 2021, the ban was extended to remove one last major exemption: cases of fetal anomalies shown. Today, many Polish citizens, and some Ukrainian safe havens who have found safe haven here. traveling elsewhere or getting abortion pills, occasionally from abroad, to end unwanted pregnancies.
However, increasingly serious restrictions at home have given rise to a small but frightening phenomenon: patients who suffer from headaches during pregnancy are denied life-saving care if a fetal heartbeat can still be detected.
“Izabela dying,” said Jolanta Budzowska, a Krakow-based non-public injury lawyer. She represents the circle of relatives of Izabela Sajbor, a 30-year-old hairdresser whose death is now one of at least 3 maternal deaths attributed by abortion rights advocates to restrictive legislation and the medical system’s overreaction towards them.
Already the mother of a baby girl, Sajbor had learned in the second trimester of a desired pregnancy that the fetus she was carrying had severe deformities, her circle of relatives said. The complication, a chromosomal abnormality known as Edwards syndrome, has effects on stillbirth. or just a brief survival for a full-term baby.
Sajbor was hospitalized in September 2021, after her waters broke prematurely. Alone in the hospital because of COVID-19 restrictions in place at the time, she said, in her harrowing final hours, that the country’s abortion measures were reducing women to “incubators. “
In the frantic text messages she sent to her mother and husband, she wrote that the doctors’ only genuine fear was the detection of a fetal heartbeat, not the worsening of her own condition.
Poland’s abortion law makes exceptions to the ban if the woman’s life or physical condition is in danger. But Budzowska says the deterrent effect of restrictions and ambiguities on legal interpretation means that some medical professionals delay or refuse intervention even when it is transparent that the woman is in danger.
“In Izabela’s case, abortion was theoretically allowed,” Budzowska said. But even after Sajbor developed sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to the infection, doctors “assumed that the fetus would die on its own and that they would not have to decide whether to perform an abortion or terminate a live pregnancy,” the lawyer said.
In Ireland, the equally heartbreaking death of 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar in 2012 spurred the legalization of abortion in women’s lives; In 2018, first-trimester abortions were legalized after a referendum repealed a constitutional ban.
Across the European Union, access to abortion in one form or another is the general norm, with Poland and Malta being the bloc’s main outliers. Last week, the European Parliament voted in favour of a solution calling for the inclusion of legal abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. He also condemned the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision.
Liberalization efforts in Poland have been hampered on several occasions, including as the near-ban on abortion has sparked some of the largest street protests of the post-communist era. Starting in 2016, thousands of protesters brandished black umbrellas, even on a transparent day. , as a symbol of what they called government oppression and intrusion into privacy.
Although Polish public sentiment seems combined about the degree of restrictions that deserve to remain in place, opinion polls imply a strong majority in favor of legal abortion in at least some circumstances.
“The number of other people supporting a more progressive law is increasing,” said Kamila Ferenc of the Federation for Women and Family Planning, a Warsaw-based advocacy organization known as FEDERA.
But so far, public opinion alone has not been enough to bring about change. The last vital exceptions to the abortion ban were removed by Poland’s supreme court, which is controlled by judges unwavering to law and justice. The Conservative Party is also the largest in Parliament, which last month rejected a measure that would have allowed abortions for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
As with any external tension over Poland, the war in Ukraine is seen as giving the ruling party greater influence in its relationship with the EU. it hosted millions of Ukrainian refugees.
Meanwhile, recent years have noted a grim trend familiar to abortion rights advocates in the United States: an ongoing crusade to criminalize aid to those who abort. Activists face prison for offering abortion pills to those who need them.
One of the activists, Justyna Wydrzynska, is recently on trial and will appear in court this week. He fears that the government will try to give him an example; if convicted, she could be imprisoned for only 3 years or more. That didn’t stop her from acknowledging that in 2020 she tried to send pills to those who begged her to help her, in cases that were extraordinarily familiar to her.
“The same thing happened to me,” said Wydrzynska, 47, a mother of 3 who escaped what she described as an abusive relationship with a man who tried to force her to have an unwanted pregnancy. She challenged him and he had an abortion; 3 years later, in 2009, she managed to divorce.
“I knew the risks, but I sought to help,” he said. Today, as part of a pan-European network called Abortion Without Borders, Wydrzynska limits her efforts to advising Polish women on where to get pills and how to use them. they – without offering them directly.
The turmoil has only served to strengthen the suffering teams to plug what they see as the latest loopholes in Poland’s abortion ban. Chief among them is the Catholic organization Ordo Iuris, which pushed for an end to the exemption on fetal abnormalities.
Katarzyna Gesiak, who heads the group’s Center for Medical Law and Bioethics, said allowing such exceptions amounted to “eugenics” and denied that the law as it stands deprives women of medical protections.
“We were very satisfied with this ruling; that was the main factor we were looking to change,” he said. But Gesiak criticized prosecutors for not being rigorous enough in prosecuting those who help women obtain medical abortions.
“They don’t need to drive away those crimes,” he said.
Faced with calls for an even harsher judicial environment, Polish abortion rights advocates say their struggle is lonely, but that they are strengthened through their European associations.
This sense of sympathy and solidarity with opposing Poles now also extends across the Atlantic, said Irene Donadio of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s European Network.
“Looking at what’s going on in a country that has defended freedom,” the United States, “is a surprise,” said Donadio, who, along with other advocates, sees abortion as a fundamental human right.
“But what encouraged me in Poland was the struggle of the citizens, when they are so determined,” he said. “When it comes to protection rights, we can all be informed of each other. “
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Laura King is a journalist founded in Washington, D. C. For The Los Angeles Times. A domestic/foreign staff member, he basically covers foreign affairs. In the past she served as head of office in Jerusalem, Kabul and Cairo.
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