'All pregnant women are in danger’: protests in Poland after expectant mother dies in hospital
“Stop killing us,” protesters across Poland chanted this evening, demanding the legalisation of abortion, after reports reached the media of a pregnant woman’s death in a hospital in May.
On Monday, Poland’s patients’ rights ombudsman, Bartłomiej Chmielowiec, said that the John Paul II hospital should have told 33-year-old Dorota Lalik that her life could be saved through an abortion. The hospital violated her rights by withholding the information, the ombudsman ruled.
The woman died in the hospital in Nowy Targ, in the south of the country, on 24 May, three days after her admission.
“No one told us that we had practically no chance for a healthy baby … The entire time they were giving us false hope that everything will be OK … that [in the worst case] the child will be premature,” Lalik’s husband told Polish media. “No one gave us the choice or the chance to save Dorota, because no one told us her life was at risk.”
Source: The Guardian, 14 June 2023