A hospital has confirmed that doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy of a woman with a fatally malformed foetus – despite psychiatrists saying that it threatened her mental health – because they feared prosecution under Poland’s recently toughened abortion law.
An NGO is suing the hospital for denying the woman her legal right to an abortion on the grounds that the pregnancy threatened her health. In its defence, the hospital cited an opinion by an ultraconservative legal body saying that “depression is not dangerous for a pregnant woman”.
The case of the 26-year-old woman in Białystok first came to light last week. It is separate from a recent incident in which a woman died after doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy despite the diagnosis of terminal birth defects. The latter case triggered mass protests against the abortion law.
"Thanks to the abortion law, there's nothing they can do," a woman texted her mother shortly before she died in hospital after doctors waited for the death of her foetus, which had birth defects.
Many blame her death on Poland’s near-total abortion ban https://t.co/5hQss5UVTI
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 4, 2021
In Białystok, the woman, Agata (not her real name), was informed by doctors that her foetus had been diagnosed with acrania, a congenital disorder in which the skull does not grow, reported Wysokie Obcasy. The condition meant that the foetus would not survive.
Doctors were unable to terminate the pregnancy on this basis, however because abortion based on a diagnosis of birth defects was outlawed by last year’s ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal (TK). Agata was therefore told that she had to wait for the foetus to die naturally. As a result, her mental health significantly declined.
“When she called us, she was in a very bad mental state, repeating that she could not cope, that she would kill herself,” said Krystyna Kacpura of Federa, a women’s sexual health NGO.
Poland’s abortion law still allows a pregnancy to be terminated if it “threatens the woman’s life or health”. Agata, therefore, sought opinions from two psychiatrists, both of whom diagnosed her with a psychotic disorder caused by the fact that she could not terminate her pregnancy.
“Continuation of pregnancy exposes the patient to the risk of psychological deterioration,” wrote the psychiatrists, quoted by Wysokie Obcasy. “Therefore termination of pregnancy should be considered.”
Her hospital in Białystok, however, refused to terminate the pregnancy. In a letter, it cited the change to the abortion law resulting from the TK ruling. It also attached an opinion from Ordo Iuris, an ultraconservative legal body, stating that “a mother’s mental disorders do not constitute a basis for terminating pregnancy”.
“Depression is not dangerous for a pregnant woman,” wrote Ordo Iuris, which has been a leading proponent in efforts to tighten the abortion law as well as in other conservative campaigns, such as against “LGBT ideology” and sex education.
In a statement issued yesterday, the director of the University Clinical Hospital in Białystok, Jan Kochanowicz, wrote that the TK ruling had left the situation “unclear”, with “no specific guidelines [for] what medical conditions can be considered a threat to the health or life of a woman”.
“Doctors are afraid not only of losing the right to practise, but also of criminal liability…on the subjective assessment of the prosecutor, court experts and courts,” said Kochanowicz. This has created “a huge problem for doctors, but also for pregnant women”.
“We understand the tragedy of this patient and we sympathise with her,” added the hospital director. He noted that a year ago, before the TK ruling went into force, there would have been an “unambiguous” decision on granting her an abortion.
Kochanowicz’s explanation was immediately rejected by Federa, which said that it should be clear to any doctor what constitutes “a threat to life or health”. They noted that the medical community has had over a year to adapt to the new situation.
The NGO confirmed that, as reported last week, it is preparing a lawsuit against the hospital on Agata’s behalf for failing to grant her her legal right to terminate a pregnancy that threatened her life or health.
Ordo Iuris, however, has spoken in support of the hospital, saying that it correctly implemented the TK ruling and therefore “saved a child”. But, since that statement was issued, it has emerged that Agata received an abortion in another hospital, reports Polsat News.
In the year after the TK ruling was made, legal abortions in Poland – which already had one of the strictest laws in Europe – dropped by 65%. NGOs report that there has been a big rise in the number of Polish women seeking abortions abroad.
In a widely publicised case, a woman in the town of Pszczyna died of septic shock in September after doctors first waited for her foetus, which had been diagnosed with fatal birth defects, to die.
Many blamed her death on the new near-total abortion ban, and thousands came out onto the streets to protest. But conservatives, including Ordo Iuris, noted that the law still allows terminations in the case of threats to the mother’s life or health, and therefore blamed medical error.
Main image credit: Adam Stepien / Agencja Gazeta
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.
