Polish woman refused abortion goes to Europe court

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – A Polish woman who was
refused an abortion despite doctors’ warnings that giving birth
could damage her eyesight accused Poland on Tuesday of failing
to protect her rights under its strict abortion law.

Alicja Tysiac, whose vision worsened after the birth and is
now registered as disabled, asked Europe’s human rights court
to consider her complaint that she was unable to obtain an
abortion on therapeutic or health grounds.

She says two articles of the European Convention on Human
Rights, protecting the right to respect for human life and
forbidding inhuman or degrading treatment, were violated.

“Poland did not protect Alicja Tysiac’s health when she was
at her most vulnerable,” her lawyer, Anna Wilkowska-Landowska,
said as the court considered the appeal in the eastern French
city of Strasbourg.

Poland, which is predominantly Roman Catholic, has one of
the toughest abortion laws in Europe.

Tysiac, who is now 35, consulted doctors when she
discovered in February 2000 that she was pregnant for the third
time. Three ophthalmologists told her she faced serious risk to
her eyesight if she carried the pregnancy to term.

However, the three refused to grant her an abortion
certificate. A gynaecologist also found there were no medical
grounds for terminating the pregnancy.

Following the delivery by Caesarean section in November
2000, Tysiac’s eyesight deteriorated considerably due to what
was diagnosed as retinal haemorrhage.

Tysiac, who is bringing up her three children alone, cannot
see objects more than 1.50 metres (12 ft) away and fears she
will eventually become blind. She receives a monthly pension
equivalent to 140 euros ($167.8) as she is disabled.

Tysiac lodged a criminal complaint against the
gynaecologist but the case was abandoned by a district
prosecutor in Poland on the grounds that there was no causal
link between the doctor’s decision and the deterioration in her
eyesight.

The European Court of Human Rights cannot make Poland
change its abortion law but could rule that Tysiac’s rights
were violated.

Abortion is allowed in Poland only when a woman is raped,
the pregnancy threatens her life of if there is a probability
the baby will have birth defects.