Tusk blames pregnant woman’s death on “government selling itself to religious sect”

Opposition leader Donald Tusk has blamed the death of a pregnant woman in a Polish hospital on the recent tightening of the abortion law. He accused the national-conservative government of “selling itself to a religious sect”.

It emerged last week that a 30-year-old, named only as Izabela, died after doctors waited for her foetus, which had birth defects, to die before removing it. She suffered septic shock and passed away soon after, leaving behind a husband and daughter.

Many have blamed her death on the near-total abortion ban introduced last year, which made it illegal to terminate pregnancies due to birth defects. But conservatives note that the law still allows abortions in the case of a threat to the mother’s life, and have blamed doctors for Izabela’s death.

Tusk made clear that he sides with the former. “The [abortion] law…causes human death” and “it is impossible to put the responsibility on doctors, because they are also, in a sense, victims of this inhuman law”, he said, quoted by Onet.

“This obsession by quasi-religious sects, and the politicians who follow the recommendations of these sects, is truly terrifying,” continued Tusk, who this year returned as leader of Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s largest opposition party.

“We see how ideological activists reach out for more victims. As long as these matters will be ruled by Mrs Godek or Father Rydzyk, this government will lie low. PiS has completely sold itself to this sect,” he added.

Kaja Godek is Poland’s most prominent anti-abortion activist, who has repeatedly pushed in recent years for the law to be tightened. Tadeusz Rydzyk is an influential Catholic priest and ally of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

It is now “prosecutors, not doctors, that guide pregnancies”, said Tusk, due to last year’s introduction of the near-total abortion by the constitutional court, which Tusk said is “under the patronage of [PiS chairman Jarosław] Kaczyński”.

The court’s chief justice, Julia Przyłębska, is a close associate of Kaczyński and the institution is seen as being under PiS influence.

“A doctor who wants to save a woman’s life must wonder if [Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Zbnigniew] Ziobro will put him in jail,” said Tusk. He encouraged people to attend planned protests tomorrow against the abortion law.

Earlier this week, a senior PiS MP claimed that Izabela’s death had “nothing to do with” the abortion law “The fact that people die is biology,” he said. “And unfortunately sometimes women die in childbirth.” On Tuesday, a PiS spokesman warned against “hasty conclusions” and said more information was needed.

Last year’s abortion ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal came at the request of PiS MPs, and senior figures from the party have repeatedly spoken in favour of tightening the law to prevent terminations due to birth defects – which they label “eugenic abortions”.

In 2016, Kaczyński declared that he would “strive to ensure that even very difficult pregnancies, when the child is condemned to death, is severely deformed, will end in birth, so that the child can be christened, buried, given a name”.

Many conservatives, however, argue that Izabela’s death was unrelated to the tightening of the law, which still allows doctors to terminate pregnancies in the case of a threat to the mother’s life or health. But activists say that doctors are fearful of prosecution if they do so.

Godek herself responded to controversy this week, writing that “if anyone justified the failure to save the patient’s life by [the decision] to make eugenic abortion illegal, then feminist groups are to blame, because they’re spreading the lie that the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal did not allow the saving of a mother’s life”.

Main image credit: Grzegorz Skowronek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.