Press play to listen to this article
Voiced by artificial intelligence.
WARSAW — The political row over sexual and reproductive rights in Poland has reignited after local media reported Wednesday that a woman who miscarried had her house’s cesspit drained in search of the fetus on orders of a prosecutor seeking to find out if the miscarriage was in fact an abortion.
The report is the latest in a series of high-profile incidents concerning Polish authorities’ heavy-handedness around abortion laws and has sparked public outcry ahead of the country’s general election in October.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party — which implemented a near-total ban on abortion that took effect in 2021 — is looking to win an unprecedented third straight term in office.
But reports of law enforcement going after women who lost their pregnancies or took abortion pills threaten the ruling party’s chances of winning. Polls show that nearly 84 percent of Poles want liberalization of the abortion law.
A July poll for OKO.Press and TOK FM indicates that while 39 percent of men and 29 percent of women would vote PiS, the ratio for support for the main opposition party, the center-right Civic Platform (PO), is the opposite: with 37 percent of women and 24 percent of men preferring PO. Given that the election race is expected to be tight overall, these figures could matter.
Earlier this month, Donald Tusk, the leader of PO, called for a “march of million hearts” on October 1 in Warsaw in solidarity with women, following a previous outcry over a media report of a woman being apprehended in hospital after taking an abortion pill.
On Thursday, a PO MP, Izabela Leszczyna, told private broadcaster Polsat News that “the purpose of this march is to mobilize all those who do not agree with PiS’s draconian, disgusting, anti-women policy and we are to win against them.”
Poland has some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, with terminations only possible in cases of rape or incest, or if the health or life of the woman is endangered. Assisting someone in carrying out medical abortions is illegal and carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison.
But women’s rights organizations have said that this latest report, concerning a woman identified only as Ola, is yet another case of how Poland’s draconian abortion laws work in practice.
Speaking out
The events reported by the women’s magazine Wysokie Obcasy unfolded in June last year. Ola told the magazine that she gained the courage to speak up after the story of how another woman, Joanna, faced off with police after taking an abortion pill was reported by private broadcaster TVN earlier this month.
Ola was 18 weeks pregnant when she called her hospital, feeling unwell and worried about her pregnancy. Upon examination, doctors diagnosed her with cervical insufficiency, prescribed medication and let her go home, Wysokie Obcasy wrote. A week later, at home, she felt “nightmarish pain” and miscarried in the toilet.
Ola was taken to hospital, where she underwent minor surgery. By that time, she said, someone — she suspected a paramedic from the ambulance crew — tipped off the police about an alleged abortion. Officers accompanied Ola home, where, on orders of the prosecutor, a specialist team had her house’s cesspit drained in search for the fetus as evidence of breaking Poland’s criminal code.
The investigation into Ola’s “abortion” was eventually discontinued in October 2022, according to Wysokie Obcasy.
“I did not commit any crime. It was a miscarriage, a tragedy for me, and, at the request of the prosecutor, I was treated like trash,” Ola told the magazine. She is currently preparing a legal case against the police and the prosecutor’s office.