Polish 'Savita' case sparks protests against restrictive abortion laws

The death of a 30-year-old woman in Poland likened to the Savita Halappanavar case has sparked protests and candlelit vigils in an outpouring of opposition to restrictive abortion laws which campaigners claim played a role in her death.

The woman known only as Izabela died of septic shock in her 22nd week of pregnancy in a hospital in Pszczyna in southern Poland, leaving behind a daughter and a husband, according to a family statement.

A lawyer for the family, Jolanta Budzowska, said that Izabela sent messages while in hospital to family and friends telling them that the medical staff were taking a "wait and see" approach. Despite a lack of amniotic fluid, doctors held back from intervening to terminate the pregnancy as they waited for the foetus to die, the lawyer said.

Protest group Women’s Strike called demonstrations in Krakow and Warsaw, and women marked the All Saints’ Day holiday by lighting candles in vigils for Izabela, in scenes reminiscent of the outcry over the death of Savita Halappanavar in Galway in 2012.

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Appeal

“Take torches, candles, lighters, matches,” the abortion rights group Aborcyjny Dream Team wrote in a social media appeal. “The doctors were waiting until the foetus was dead. They were waiting and watching, until the foetus’s heart stopped beating. She also had a heart that kept on beating.”

Candles were lit at the constitutional tribunal in Warsaw, which issued a ruling in 2020 that led to a near-total ban on abortion in a country that already had some of Europe’s strictest laws.

“We cannot ignore the legal environment in which we operate after the court’s ruling,” Ms Budzowska said in an interview with newspaper Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, going on to liken the case to the death of Halappanavar.

"These cases resemble a similar situation in Ireland, " Ms Budzowska said. "Savita Halappanavar died there . . . no one had any doubts that her death was caused by restrictive abortion laws and doctors' fears of legal responsibility for putting the mother's life ahead of the foetus . . . it had a chilling effect."

Referendum

The societal response to Halappanavar’s death “led to a referendum and a change in the law in Ireland”, the lawyer said.

It comes amid a push by conservative groups for the laws to be tightened further to mandate prison sentences for abortion and remove remaining exemptions such as rape.

Members of the ruling Law and Justice party have denied that the death of Izabela was linked to the restrictive abortion laws, and the hospital in which she died said staff had done everything they could to save her.

“The only factor guiding the medical procedure was concern for the health and life of the patient and the foetus,” the statement from the Pszczyna County Hospital read. “Doctors and midwives did everything in their power, they fought a difficult battle for the patient and her child.”