EU lawmakers will soon hold a public hearing to present lawmakers with a list of the women who reportedly died due to tightened abortion laws which created a de facto ban.
The hearing will be held on 17 November before two Parliament committees, with representatives of women’s rights organisations attending. New Left MEP and Chairman of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Robert Biedroń is among those who initiated the hearing.
The list of victims will be presented by Kamila Ferenc, a lawyer at the Foundation for Women and Family Planning (FEDERA).
The European Parliament already condemned Poland in a resolution in 2021, a year after the Constitutional Court ruled that abortions due to fetal defects are unconstitutional, effectively only allowing abortions in cases when births result from rape or incest, or are a threat to the mother’s life.
Since the highest court’s ruling in the autumn of 2020, widespread media coverage was given to situations where women seeking abortions did not receive treatment from doctors allegedly fearing criminal liability but then died.
One case that garnered widespread media coverage is the one of 30-year-old Izabela, who died of sepsis in a hospital in Pszczyna because doctors waited for the fetus to die by itself before giving life-saving treatment.
“The ruling has negatively affected the availability of prenatal tests and even the treatment of patients in the gynaecology and obstetrics departments. Many more seriously ill babies are being born who die immediately after birth. All this entails a psychological burden for many women,” said Ferenc for Rzeczpospolita.
The issue of abortion remains one of the main topics of public debate in Poland.
According to recent polls, the Constitutional Court’s controversial ruling has negatively impacted the willingness of Polish women to bear children.
(Bartosz Sieniawski | EURACTIV.pl)
Source: euractiv.com
