Polish legal group calls for suspension of doctor’s license for letting abortion survivor die

In late July 2025, Polish pro-life legal think tank Ordo Iuris filed a report with authorities on the basis of a suspected crime perpetuated by abortionist Dr. Gizela Jagielska and other medical staff at the County Hospital Complex in Oleśnica. 

The Ordo Iuris report said Jagielska conducted a late-term abortion procedure for a pregnant woman in the 26th week of pregnancy, after which the baby — who was born alive — did not receive medical assistance, eventually dying as a result. The group is calling for an immediate suspension of Jagielska’s medical license. 

Key Takeaways:

• A pro-life group in Poland is calling for an abortionist’s license to be revoked after she failed to administer medical care to a 26-week abortion survivor.

• The doctor herself testified that the situation occurred, and that she and other staff offered the child palliative care, expecting the baby to die.

• This same abortionist committed a 37-week abortion on a baby with brittle bone disease, as was reported in April.

• The pro-life group noted that laws have been broken, and that any child born alive, regardless of circumstances, has human rights and should not be left to die.

The Details:

In an interview with Polish media outlet Wysokie Obcasy, Dr. Jagielska disclosed the circumstances surrounding the abortion, stating how after the child was born alive, medical staff only offered palliative care — in anticipation of the infant’s death — instead of administering life-saving treatment. 

“There was a brief moment when we did not use potassium chloride. I was present at one such abortion in the 26th week. […] And let me say this: neither I nor anyone on my staff would ever want to participate in something like this again,” Jagielska admitted. 

Adding, Jagielska went on: “The child is born and we wait for it to die. Of course, we provide palliative care. But that situation only reinforced our conviction that we cannot do this. It’s not what women come to us for.”

Jagielska has been embroiled in other contentious cases. In April of this year, a Polish media outlet reported how Jagielska performed an induced abortion at 37 weeks of pregnancy at the request of a woman whose unborn son had been diagnosed with brittle bone disease, medically known as osteogenesis imperfecta (OI). 

The Response:

In response to Jagielska’s admission, Ordo Iuris declared: 

The doctor’s account shows that a situation arose in which a live-born child did not receive any treatment aimed at saving its life. Instead, only palliative care was provided, which would be appropriate for terminally ill patients whose lives cannot be reasonably prolonged by any available means.

In the case of a premature baby born at 26 weeks of pregnancy who, as Jagielska herself points out, was born alive, the failure to provide any medical intervention may have meant deliberately exposing him to a painful death as a result of respiratory failure.

The group added:

Since Dr. Jagielska talks about such events publicly, it means she is convinced of her own impunity. As a society, we cannot accept a situation in which a doctor waits for a newborn to die and then talks about it in the media. Such people should not be allowed to practice medicine, even temporarily, which is why we are demanding that Dr. Jagielska’s license to practice be suspended for the duration of the proceedings, which can be done by both the prosecutor and the medical council.

It also called for “all those who calmly watched the child die in agony be punished.”

The Bottom Line:

Ordo Iuris made clear that Jagielska’s actions breached the Polish Penal Code, stating that this conduct “constitutes a crime of failing to provide assistance to a person in immediate danger of death (Article 162 § 1 of the Polish Penal Code) and exposing a person under one’s care to the risk of death (Article 160 § 2 of the Penal Code).”

Ordo Iuris also noted that any child born alive has full human rights and entitlement to medical treatment. Per Polish medical guidelines, a neonatologist should have acted promptly after the birth of a viable premature infant who needed aid, yet this was not done in the case involving Jagielska. 

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