3 Polish doctors convicted in 2021 death of pregnant woman

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Three Polish doctors were convicted for their roles in the 2021 death of a 30-year-old pregnant woman that sparked massive protests, Polish news agency PAP reported.

The death from sepsis of the woman known as Iza at a hospital in southern Poland in her 22nd week of pregnancy led to huge street protests against the country’s restrictive anti-abortion law. Activists blamed her death on doctors’ choice to “wait and see” rather than immediately carry out an abortion because of the Poland’s near-ban on the procedure.

Two of the doctors were sentenced to more than a year in prison without parole and the third received a two-year suspended sentence, PAP reported Thursday. They can appeal the decision.

The charges, filed in 2022, were of exposing the patient to the danger of loss of life. Two of the doctors also were charged with unintentionally causing the patient’s death.

“As a result of the team’s activity and the failure to act, the patient has died,” Agnieszka Wichary, spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office in Katowice, said in a statement at the time.

Poland, a mostly Catholic country, passed a strict law in 1993 that banned abortions except when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, when the woman’s life or health is at risk, or when the fetus had congenital deformities.

But the Constitutional Tribunal, under the influence of Poland’s conservative ruling party, ruled in 2020 that abortions for congenital defects were not constitutional, even if the fetus has no chance of survival. That sparked huge street protests.

Activists said Iza was the first to die from the further tightening of the restrictive law. The woman left behind a husband and a daughter.

In practice, activists say, many women have abortions on their own with pills obtained from abroad.