Abortion law protesters take to streets in Poland

WARSAW, Poland — Protesters turned out in Warsaw and in many other Polish cities Saturday to decry the country’s restrictive abortion law, which they say has led to the death of a young mother with a pregnancy that had medical problems.

The protesters held portraits of the woman, 30-year-old Iza, who died from septic shock in hospital in Pszczyna, southern Poland.

She died in September, but her death just became known in the last week. Doctors at the hospital held off terminating her 22-week pregnancy despite the fact that her fetus lacked enough amniotic fluid for it to survive, her family and a lawyer say.

The doctors have been suspended, and prosecutors are investigating.

Women’s rights activists say the woman was a victim of Poland’s newly restrictive abortion law. They say doctors in Poland, a heavily Catholic nation, now wait for a fetus with severe defects to die in the womb rather than perform an abortion.

The protesters gathered before the Constitutional Tribunal that ruled last year that terminating a pregnancy with congenital defects is against Poland’s constitution. They then marched to the Health Ministry.

Before the new restriction, women in Poland could have abortions only in three cases: if the pregnancy resulted from a crime like rape, if the woman’s life was at risk or in the case of irreparable defects of the fetus. The last possibility was closed by the tribunal’s verdict.

Those in favor of the new restriction say it’s not clear that the restriction led to the woman’s death.