It took years of protests and countless medical tragedies, but in Poland, at least three people are answering for the country’s deadly abortion ban—even if it’s not yet the government.
The country banned abortion in 1993, with exceptions for rape, incest, to save the mother, or congenital defects. But a constitutional tribunal in 2020 removed the congenital defect exception, even if the fetus has a zero-percent chance of survival. Izabela’s case was reported as the first death resulting from that tribunal.
The ruling sent Poles to the streets in the largest protest since the country’s communist regime collapsed. Through its restrictions, doctors were instructed to deploy a “wait-and-see” treatment method. Izabela was ultimately caught in the crossfire of this “barbaric law,” and her story sparked another wave of protests across the country, making her the face of the “not one more” movement. In pickets lining the streets, scribed across her grave, and uttered across Europe, the public protested: “not one more.”
Sepsis, a condition in which the body reacts to infection by injuring its own tissues and organs, is the second-most leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S., the CDC previously reported (well, before MAHA eviscerated the entire website). Abortion bans—which are often purposely confusing and vaguely written—make patients far more vulnerable to sepsis, as doctors delay care out of fear of fines, prison time, or losing their license.
This means Izabela’s story is not an uncommon one. Across the U.S., states with abortion bans have seen maternal mortality rates rise. When Texas implemented a six-month ban in 2021, sepsis rates surged by more than 50% in the state, ProPublica reported in February. Pregnant people are also almost twice as likely to die from pregnancy- and birth-related reasons in abortion-banned states, the Gender Equity Policy Institute reported earlier this year.
In the U.S., at least five women died in 2024 due to their states’ abortion bans—and nothing changed. In Poland, the doctors’ verdicts can be overturned, and abortion-law reform has been a delayed promise. Any type of real reckoning remains wishful thinking.
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