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Breaking the Silence: How Poland’s Abortion Law Jeopardizes Women’s Health and Rights
– Reported, February 04, 2012
Forty-four-year-old Bozena was elated with the news that she was pregnant for the first time. Because of her age, she wisely decided to have prenatal tests conducted. The examination revealed that the fetus had Down syndrome. Bozena made the difficult decision to terminate her pregnancy. Despite Poland’s stringent abortion law, Bozena was legally entitled to an abortion due to her diagnosis. She received a medical referral, which she presented to a hospital. But the director of the hospital delayed arrangements for the operation until he received the opinions of other doctors on staff. According to the law, the medical referral should have been sufficient in and of itself. Instead, when one doctor, well-known for his anti-abortion stance, rejected the referral, the hospital director refused Bozena her right to an abortion. With the active support of her family, Bozena appealed unsuccessfully to have the abortion performed. The hospital administration continually denied her requests in an unduly abusive manner. A difficult situation turned into a stressful race with time. One result was that Bozena’s father had a heart attack. Weeks later, her medical referral was finally accepted at another hospital, but not before her entire family had been traumatized by the unjust, irrational treatment of a medical establishment.
In response to Bozena’s experience and the stories of thousands more women like her, an Abortion Tribunal was held in Warsaw on July 25. Organized by the Federation for Women and Family Planning, the only organization to advocate for quality reproductive health care and freedoms in Poland, the goal was to publicize the human tolls of the country’s tough abortion law.
Abortion was legal during Poland’s communist era, but came under immediate legislative assaults following the country’s transition to democratic governance. A 1993 law sanctioned by Poland’s Catholic Church severely limited the grounds for legal abortion. Under the law, pregnancy can only be terminated if the pregnancy constitutes a threat to the life or health of the mother; if there is damage to the fetus; or if the pregnancy is the result of a criminal act such as rape or incest.
“The anti-abortion law has caused many tragedies in the life and health of hundreds of thousands of women in Poland,” stated Wanda Nowicka, executive director of the Federation for Women and Family Planning. The Tribunal presented testimonies made by or on behalf of seven women, who bravely shed their privacy and opened themselves to the cultural stigma surrounding abortion to publicly voice their painful experiences with cruelly unresponsive health care and justice systems. Most, like Bozena, had been refused abortions even though they were legally entitled. Others were forced to seek out costly, unsafe, illegal abortions in ill-equipped private clinics. Through their moving, first-hand accounts, the unprecedented forum aimed to reinvigorate public discussion on one of the country’s most controversial issues — and most importantly, to build momentum for reforming the abortion law once a new parliament is in place following the September 2001 elections.
One critical problem is that neither the general public nor the medical profession is adequately educated about the law. Barbara, 28 years old, had a disabled four-year-old son. He was born with a rare disease, hypochondroplasia, which causes disfigurement of the joints, underdevelopment of the limbs, and chronic pain. Although Barbara used contraceptives, she became pregnant again. Her doctor was not even aware that abortion is legal under certain conditions. He refused to refer her for prenatal tests. A hospital administrator then told her that even if she had the tests and they detected illness or deformity, she would still not be admitted for an abortion, because in that hospital, “nobody wants to have any problems.” After a drawn-out battle with the health care bureaucracy, Barbara delivered a disabled daughter, with the same illness as her son. Barbara receives no state support for her two sick children.
There is a strong undercurrent of disapproval and obstruction toward those who choose abortions under the few conditions that still allow for it to occur. Doctors and hospitals frequently misguide or misinform women, who are legally entitled to terminate pregnancies, thereby placing the health of the women or of their babies at serious risk.
Thirty-one-year-old Alicja, the mother of two children ages eight and seven, suffered from serious eyesight problems including damaged retinas. When she became pregnant, an eye doctor issued a diagnosis that pregnancy would further damage Alicja’s eyesight and recommended an abortion. The gynecologist at a public hospital, to whom Alicja was referred, opposed the diagnosis and destroyed the medical report, thus blocking her ability to seek medical treatment elsewhere. Alicja, who is a social welfare recipient, could not afford to take legal action or to have an illegal abortion. Instead, she went through with the pregnancy. After the baby was born, her eyesight worsened to the degree that she is unable to work or to care properly for her new baby and is dependent on others. A social welfare worker asked her why she had delivered three children into such disgraceful poverty.
After the testimonies were given, a panel of experts presented their conclusions that Poland’s abortion law jeopardizes women’s health and rights. “These cases expose what the law really is — an oppression that keeps women from control of their bodies,” stated Dr. Ann Snitow, co-founder of the Network of East-West Women. One of the strictest abortion laws in Europe and, in fact, in the world, the Polish law was deemed a failure by Warsaw University law professor Eleonora Zielinska, another expert commentator, because it prohibits access to safe procedures, violates women’s rights, and exposes them to health risks.
The panel of international experts, representing the law, medicine, sociology, non-governmental organizations, and international human rights organazations, also agreed that the law breeds distrust in the health care and legal systems. “Both systems clearly lack interest in nurturing the members of the society,” Snitow noted. Other commentators included Dr. Marek Balicki (Polish former Deputy Minister of Health and MP); Leszek Kubicki (Law Professor and former Polish Minister of Justice); Krystyna Kofta (Polish writer); Kinga Dunin (Polish writer); Ewa Dabrowska Szulz (Pro Femina, Poland); Francoise Girard (International Women’s Health Coalition, France); and Dr. Rebecca Gomperts (Executive Director of Women on Waves, The Netherlands).
“All of Poland’s problems are contained in these stories,” declared former Deputy Minister of Health Dr. Marek Balicki. Some of the doctors described in the women’s testimonies are “villains,” Balicki said. He called upon his medical colleagues to remedy the neglectful health care system.
In a chilling indictment of Poland’s legal system, former Minister of Justice Leszek Kubicki called the abortion law a “cruel perversion of justice” and recommended that legal action be taken against negligent doctors and hospitals. The abortion law also violates numerous international human rights conventions, which Poland has endorsed or ratified, according to the US-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP), a co-organizer of the Tribunal. Reproductive rights are guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Human Rights Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
According to Christina Zampas of the CRLP: “In countries of the European Union, the past decade has seen much progress in securing women’s right to high quality and decent abortion services. Yet in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, women’s reproductive rights are more a myth than a reality. Instead of progress, we see regress, a deepening of the divide between Poland and almost all countries of the European Union on the issues of women’s human rights.”
The Tribunal exposed the social and medical issues concerning unwanted pregnancy and unsafe and illegal abortion. It also highlighted the deeply private and personal concerns surrounding the decision to keep or terminate a pregnancy. Each story told to the Tribunal contributed distinct and important information which, taken together, brilliantly illustrated the devastating reality of the abortion law’s impact on Polish women’s lives. Hospitals send women away to other hospitals and clinics, thereby making access to legal abortion extremely difficult. Mired in bureaucratic red tape, the clock ticking away, hundreds of women legally entitled to abortion turn to what is called the “abortion underground” for illegal abortions. Performed by doctors in poorly outfitted facilities for approximately $1,000 (USD), these expensive, “private” abortions endanger a woman’s health — and sometimes her life.
Several family members attended the Tribunal to hear the story of their beloved twenty-year-old Kasia. Kasia was the mother of a one-year-old child, when she became pregnant a second time. She decided, with her husband’s support, to have a “private” abortion. Although her pregnancy was in an advanced stage, she found a doctor who agreed to do the costly abortion in a private clinic. Complications arose during the operation, which required emergency medical attention, such as only hospital facilities provide. Rather than bring his patient to a hospital emergency room just 500 meters from his clinic, the doctor transported Kasia to a hospital 20 kilometers away, because he feared for his own legal culpability more than for the grave risk placed on his patient’s life. Kasia was delivered to the hospital too late to be helped. She died there. Her family was only informed of her death when they arrived at the hospital.
“Restrictive abortion regulations only have negative consequences,” reported the Federation for Women and Family Planning in a comprehensive study released earlier this year. It is not only individual women who bear the consequences. The society as a whole is at risk. “The individuals who suffer at the hands of this negligent bureaucracy can be taken as an emblem of life in the new Poland, which claims no intention to provide a safety net for its citizens,” underscored Ann Snitow.
“There is something terribly wrong with a justice system that compromises women’s exercise of her right to health and life. Women’s health is a fundamental human right, which cannot be compromised by the government, by politicians, by religious leaders or any other actor,” declared Christina Zampas. “It is time for more women in Poland to speak out.”
To encourage other women to come forth and to further educate the public and policy makers, the Federation published the Tribunal testimonies in a book, Women’s Hell: Contemporary Stories. Dedicated “To all those who thought there were more important issues,” the publication’s title is drawn from a well-known book, published in 1929 by a famous doctor, Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski, who warned against the dangers of illegal abortion. That earlier text continues to be condemned by the Catholic Church because, as Wanda Nowicka explained: “He was critical of the Church’s stand on abortion in his lifetime. In addition, his book is relevant to today’s situation.”
With the forecast of a more liberal parliament being voted into power, the Federation has stepped up its advocacy efforts for reform of the law with expanded media coverage in September, a repeat performance of the Tribunal, and Wanda Nowicka’s bid for a seat in parliament. Nowicka may soon have political leverage to back her unswerving, pro-choice commitment, which she reaffirmed at the Tribunal: “It is time to change the law after eight years of experimenting on women. Enough experiments on women in Poland.”
Credits: Shana Penn
More Information at:
http://www.federa.org.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=241:qbreaking-the-silence-how-polands-abortion-law-jeopardizes-womens-health-and-rightsq&catid=64:other&Itemid=127
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