In 2021, a young woman came to a hospital in eastern Poland to get an abortion: she was suffering from severe mental distress because the fetus she was carrying had the lethal defect anencephaly. The doctors refused her the procedure for fear of breaking the law.
The case of Agata, whose surname is not publicly known, exemplifies what Poland's liberal opposition sees as an erosion of women's rights during the eight-year rule of the nationalist Law and Justice party.
"PiS doesn't respect women," Magdalena Bojko, a 36-year-old office worker, said during an opposition rally this month. Since winning power in 2015, it has ended state funding for IVF and enforced a prescription requirement for emergency contraception, as well as launching a universal child benefit and cash incentives for women to have at least four children.
Political scientists say massive protests that swept through Poland over the abortion ban in recent years may motivate some female voters to support the opposition, but may also have convinced others their voice doesn't count. Fertility rates in Poland fell to the lowest since World War Two this year. Activists say that's in part because women are scared of having children following a handful of cases when pregnant women died of sepsis in hospitals as doctors waited for the fetus' heart to stop beating.
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