Outrage in Poland: Baby with disability killed by abortion at 37 weeks

An investigation is underway in Poland after a doctor committed an induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child — at 37 weeks of pregnancy. Poland protects the majority of preborn children from abortion with exceptions when a mother’s life or health is at risk or a child was conceived in rape or incest. In 2022, Poland removed a previous exception that had allowed abortion for children with a prenatal diagnosis.

In March, a woman known as Anita shared with a Polish media outlet that she had undergone an abortion at 37 weeks because her son had been diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), also known as brittle bone disease. Though Politico reported on the abortion, that outlet did not state this reasoning for the abortion, instead claiming that the mother’s life was “severely endangered” by the pregnancy.

Last week, Polish presidential candidate Grzegorz Braun threatened the abortionist — Dr. Gizela Jagielska — with a citizen’s arrest for carrying out the abortion rather than delivering the child alive.

AT A GLANCE:

• While media reports vary, with some claiming the abortion was done for the mother’s health, the mother told Polish media she was not suicidal and sought abortion to spare her child pain.

• The child’s parents were urged to place their son for adoption but refused.

• Doctors argued for the abortion from a perspective of what might happen, though there were no signs of these complications occurring.

• While doctors told the parents they did not see severe defects, medical students’ insensitive remarks about the baby led his mother to begin seeking an abortion.

• Poland’s Family Planning Act of 1993 does not say that the threat to the mother must be an immediate emergency to allow for an abortion — a deadly loophole.

• The child’s mother has said she feels she is her son’s hero for not allowing him to live with a disability.

Anita and Felek’s story

According to Notes from Poland, Anita told Gazeta Wyborcza that she sought the abortion after doctors told her that her baby boy, named Felek, had OI. After months of debate regarding his official diagnosis and the severity of his condition, Anita felt she could not trust the doctors, who all gave her different opinions on her son’s health.

At 20 weeks of pregnancy, Anita and her partner Maciej learned their preborn son had “shortening and bending of the femurs.” Doctors told them not to worry and ordered an amniocentesis. This was the second little boy for the couple, and the pregnancy had not been planned, yet they were excited.

At 28 weeks, Anita returned for a follow-up ultrasound, which likewise revealed “shortened and bent femurs.” Shortly after, Anita received a call telling her to “… ‘come immediately for urgent tests. The child has osteogenesis imperfecta.’ I cried so much that I couldn’t drive. I called my husband.”

When they arrived at the hospital, the doctor, Prof. Moczulska, confirmed the diagnosis and told them it was the “mildest form” and was “not tragic.” Gazeta Wyborcza reported Anita as saying:

Felek will go to kindergarten normally, then to school. No one may even know about the disease, because the bones will heal so quickly. We just have to be more careful with him, because he will be prone to fractures.

But at her next appointment, Anita saw Dr. Susan Afshari-Stasiak, and was told that there was a chance of oligohydramnios — too little amniotic fluid. After leaving the appointment, she received a call stating that she needed to stay at the hospital to be monitored. Łódź Hospital was full, so she was sent to Pabianice Hospital.

There, Anita learned she did “not have advanced oligohydramnios” and her baby was “developing well… not very small at all,” and that a defect was “clearly visible,” but “everything is fine.”

But the next morning, she received a call from Łódź that there was now room for her. She went to have another test, but told them the other hospital had found the oligohydramnios was not advanced. Regardless, doctors said she had to stay at Łódź Hospital until her baby was delivered. She was 34 weeks pregnant.

Anita was examined by Prof. Piotr Sieroszewski, president of the Polish Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians and head of the Department of Fetal Medicine and Gynecology at the Medical University of Łódź, and some of his students. Anita said the students were commenting, “Look how bent [his] legs are! Look at [his] arms, and those ribs! How many fractures!”

These comments were a turning point for Anita. “It was thanks to students, not doctors, that I realized that this is not some minor defect. My Felek is seriously ill,” she said.

A bone disease specialist then told Anita it was unclear if her son would survive.

READ: Mom raises awareness about brittle bone disease with beautiful photos of son

The moment Anita chose abortion

From the hospital, Anita called her three-year-old son, who allegedly said something surprising for such a young child. Anita explained, “He buried his head in his hands and cried that ‘when Mommy comes back from the hospital, she’ll take care of my sick brother and forget about me’.”

“That’s when I gave up. I admitted to myself that I couldn’t handle all of this,” she said.

Anita’s sister Karolina began calling pro-abortion organizations, which told them that Anita could have an abortion. Anita became convinced, “We can spare Felek pain by not giving him birth.”

But Anita also worried about becoming the mother of a child who might not live independently and wondered who would take care of him after she and Maciej were gone. Would her other son, Krzyś, have to care for his brother? She didn’t know if she could be someone who “doesn’t work and only reaches out for money from the state.”

Fear seemed to take over. That’s when she told the doctors she was considering abortion and asked to speak to a psychologist.

Doctors brought Anita to the emergency room at the psychiatric hospital, where she said she was kept against her will because she was a danger to herself. Psychiatrists and Prof. Sieroszewski said her mental health was “deteriorating,” and that she had a “high risk of auto- and allo-aggressive behavior.”

However, Anita said she had no thoughts of suicide.

After leaving that hospital a few days later, she filed “for the provision of guaranteed healthcare benefits in the form of termination of pregnancy due to the risk to her physical and mental health.” A letter was written on her behalf by attorney Kamila Ferenc from the FEDERA Foundation, a non-governmental organization that advocates for abortion.

Doctors and psychologists from the Diagnostic and Observation Department, including Prof. Małgorzata Urban-Kowalczyk, wrote that “there are grounds to terminate the pregnancy.” They claimed that Felek’s condition created an indirect threat to Anita’s physical health, allowing for a legal abortion, even though Felek was nearly full term.

They allegedly argued that Anita’s membranes could rupture, causing Felek to die and potentially leading to sepsis.

The Family Planning Act of 1993 does not say that the threat to the mother must be an immediate emergency to allow for an abortion — a deadly loophole.

“A doctor has an obligation to save the life or health of a woman, even at the cost of the fetus’s life,” claimed Urban-Kowalczyk. She said that Felek would be killed with a lethal injection of potassium chloride.

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However, Prof. Sieroszewski was against the abortion, which he referred to as ‘inappropriate for civilized people’ and in violation of Polish law. In a previous interview, he said, “After the 23rd week of pregnancy, we are also obliged to save the life and health of the fetus.” This meant that doctors could deliver Felek alive and provide him with medical care, preventing any potential threat to Anita’s life.

“The fetus, despite the presence of a defect in the form of congenital osteogenesis imperfecta in the fetus, is in good condition and is potentially capable of extrauterine life,” wrote Sieroszewski. The official response to Anita’s application for an abortion stated, “There are not grounds for terminating the pregnancy by inducing fetal asphyxia.”

Instead, Anita was offered an emergency C-section, which she refused.

Anita left the hospital and went the next day to a hospital in Oleśnica that commits abortions. On the way there, the couple reconsidered and nearly went home, but ultimately decided to kill their son to spare him any potential suffering. However, that hospital also told them to await genetic tests to determine the severity of Felek’s condition before aborting him.

Another ultrasound showed no new fractures. Anita said, “They said that at this stage, they couldn’t say much about the defect. And up until now they couldn’t, because ‘the symptoms appeared discreetly.’ They never noticed anything that would worry them. Again, I hear that ‘more will be known when the baby is born.'”

At 36 weeks, Felek’s condition was officially diagnosed as a new mutation of OI rather than inherited mutations from his parents. Because it was a ‘de novo’ mutation, doctors could not predict the severity of Felek’s condition or if he was at risk of dying shortly after birth.

It was then, in the ninth month of pregnancy, that a doctor suggested adoption. But Anita did not want to allow a child with this disability to be born.

As they prepared to leave the hospital, Dr. Jagielska, deputy director of a hospital in Oleśnica, began her shift. She hurriedly prepped Anita for an abortion and injected Felek in the heart with the feticide that caused him to go into cardiac arrest. He was 37 weeks.

Once Felek was dead, it took Anita six hours to deliver him, which she called “the worst six hours of my life.”

Anita wants everyone to know how difficult doctors made it for her to have an abortion, and that she was being heroic by not allowing her son to live with a disability.

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Life with OI

It can be difficult for able-bodied individuals to imagine life with a physical disability, but nine-year-old Theo is living with OI.

When he was a newborn, Theo’s parents learned he had ‘de novo’ OI, just like Felek. Although it is impossible to compare the outcomes for the two boys, Theo is living a good life. He has Type III OI, the most severe among children who survive after birth. He goes to school, plays in a special basketball league, and participates in wheelchair track and adaptive bowling. He loves to swim and has even been skiing. Could Felek have lived a similar life?

In a recent social media post, abortionist Jagielska said, “The decision to have an abortion in the second and third trimesters usually does not come easily to women. Most often, the background is a serious developmental defect of the fetus, a genetic abnormality, or an event resulting in a high probability of giving birth to a child with serious diseases.” (In the U.S., a report from the Congressional Research Service showed that a “small minority” of late abortions are done for fetal abnormality.)

She added, “… I think that none of us has the right to judge why they did it […] You will never know what you would do in their situation unless you find yourself in such a situation.” 

Jagielska claimed Anita’s health was at risk, but Anita doesn’t appear to have said this during her interview with Gazeta Wyborcza. She claimed she didn’t want her family to suffer or struggle. While Anita was overcome with emotions and fears, Jagielska was of a clear mind when she committed the abortion on Felek instead of connecting Anita to supportive organizations for children with OI that could have helped the family.

Every woman in that situation deserves true support — not the reinforcement of her worst fears, which may not ever come to pass.