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Picture of the deceased Izabela at a demo: There is a war against people with uterus
Photo: NurPhoto / Getty Images
The more harshly abortion is criminalized, the more pregnant women are seen only as a vessel for a potential child. In Poland, tens of thousands are currently protesting against the abortion law, which forbids abortion almost completely and has now probably led to the death of a woman for the first time: 30-year-old Izabela was in the 22nd week of pregnancy when it became apparent that her fetus had no chance of survival. Doctors waited until the fetus itself died instead of removing it. Izabela died of septic shock on the way to the operating room to have the body removed from her uterus.
She could have been saved.
She could still be alive, she could mourn her miscarriage now, and her first child would still have a mother - if the doctors responsible had given her a right to life and health.
The director of the hospital where they let Izabela die said in a television interview that at the moment of admission to the hospital the situation was not so critical as to require "any hysterical acts" to be undertaken.
In messages to her mother, Izabela wrote: "The child weighs 485 grams. Thanks to the abortion law, I have to lie down first.
And there is nothing I can do.
They wait for it to die or for something to begin [that is, a birth] and if not, I can expect sepsis. ”A short time later she was dead.
It is a war in which the rights of an embryo or fetus matter more than the rights of the pregnant woman.
The doctors in charge have now been suspended and the public prosecutor's office is investigating, because doctors in Poland actually have to act if the pregnant woman's life is in acute danger.
But that cannot change the fact that Poland has become a rogue state that is involved in a war against people with uterus -year-old high school graduate in Texas a few months ago when she used her graduation speech to criticize abortion laws in her country.
It is a war in which the rights of an embryo or fetus matter more than the rights of the pregnant woman.
Even if, as in the case of Izabela, there is no chance of a viable child being born.
A politician of the Polish ruling party PiS, Marek Suski, commented on the woman's death with the words: "People die, that is biology." Unfortunately, it is just the case that women sometimes die during childbirth.
The cynical and mendacious ease with which the death of a woman who could still be alive is commented on here stands in extreme contrast to the claims of anti-abortionists who like to call themselves “life protectors” or “pro life”.
But the life that has already been born - namely the pregnant woman - is completely irrelevant to them.
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After the death of a pregnant woman: Tens of thousands demonstrate in Poland against the abortion law
For many Germans, Poland is just the slightly backward, curiously Catholic country from which the cheap care and cleaning workers come, but what is happening in Poland with women's and LGBTQI rights is a real hell that is not that far away - neither geographically nor politically.
And the less a state cares about the rights of pregnant women, the more laws there are that make abortions more difficult, the more those who see such abortions as "child murder" are encouraged.
Basic health care is no longer guaranteed
One can argue for a long time, probably indefinitely, up to which week of pregnancy abortions should be uncomplicated. But this question should not detract from the fact that, firstly, the criminalization of abortions can cost human lives and, secondly, it is also a danger for those pregnant women who actually want to carry the child to term, as in the case of Izabela.
In Germany, too, it is becoming increasingly difficult for pregnant women who want or have to terminate their pregnancy. There are regions in which it is very difficult for pregnant women to get an appointment for an abortion, also because some doctors do not allow themselves to be put on the list of those who have abortions because they are afraid of attacks from anti-abortionists have to. In addition, there is the »advertising ban«, which forbids doctors to publicly inform about abortions.
Doctor Alicia Baier was recently charged for speaking about abortion methods in an interview. The proceedings have been discontinued, but Baier still speaks of a “new level of escalation”: “People who are involved in the area of reproductive rights should be silenced.” If abortion is becoming more and more difficult, it means that for people who are pregnant or could become, basic health care is no longer guaranteed. Teresa Bücker wrote on Twitter: "A small reminder that a vaccination requirement is being described as too much of an encroachment on physical self-determination, while Section 218 of the Criminal Code contains an obligation to carry out pregnancies, which some, including the FDP, classify as a good social compromise."
And while all of these things happen, journalists are still continuing anti-abortion propaganda. In a text by Deutsche Welle on the case in Poland it was said: “Radical life protectors will not give up. The Pro Prawo do życia (Pro Right to Life) foundation has just submitted an even more radical bill to parliament. According to this, every abortion should be regarded as infanticide and punished with prison terms of up to 25 years. The term "radical protectors of life" is used as if it were not a completely absurd ideological twist - in reporting on the death of a pregnant woman.
The author Sibel Schick recently wrote about her unwanted pregnancy, which she wanted to terminate: When she had already made an appointment for the mandatory counseling that precedes every abortion in Germany, she suddenly had health problems and had to go to the hospital: a bilateral pulmonary artery embolism, As it later turned out: »When my unwanted pregnancy triggered a bilateral pulmonary artery embolism a few days before my conflict counseling and I was admitted to the hospital, the doctors did not want to examine me using radiation. That was because they didn't want to take the risk of being sued afterwards. "
A nurse who wanted to draw her blood said she had to make sure that "the mom and the child" were okay.
She could have died, writes Schick.
Pulmonary embolism can be fatal.
She might not have got it if she could have had an abortion faster.
And she would have been treated faster if her decision to terminate the pregnancy had been taken seriously.
"The paragraphs that criminalize abortions and access to information have to go so that we can live," she writes.
Poland is not that far away.