Pregnant Ukrainian refugees are struggling to get abortion care in Poland, which has some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws. hannakozlowska reports in partnership with FullerProject
Photo: Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Before war forced her to flee Ukraine, Myroslava Marchenko worked as an OB/GYN at a private clinic in Kyiv. Her first question to a new patient was always, “How do you feel about this pregnancy?” While she didn’t perform abortions herself, the procedure is generally legal and accessible in Ukraine, and if a patient wanted to terminate their pregnancy, Marchenko could refer them.
Marchenko summarized what many of the women who call the helpline tell her: They are strapped for cash in a foreign country, have no means of sustaining themselves, and can’t get support from their families or husbands who had to stay in Ukraine. Many already have children. “It’s always the same story, just the person changes,” Marchenko said. “The reasons are the same.”
In the last week of April, Marchenko got a call from a woman who couldn’t stop crying. The woman came from an occupied region near Kyiv, where she said she had been raped by a Russian soldier. She arrived in Poland with her 14-year-old daughter and some other relatives, but told Marchenko none of them knew she was pregnant. “I can’t keep this baby; it reminds me all the time of what I’ve been through,” Marchenko said the woman told her.
Marchenko has received private messages on her social media from other women who say they’d been assaulted by Russian soldiers. One was just 16, another 25, and both were ill-equipped to deal with the bureaucracy around securing a legal abortion in Poland. Federa head Krystyna Kacpura said her organization had received requests for help from several young women in a similar situation.
Poland has had restrictive abortion laws for decades, but a 2020 court ruling that held abortions even in cases of fetal abnormality were unconstitutional led to a dramatic tightening. Reproductive-rights groups say the ruling has created an atmosphere where doctors fear prosecution for terminating a pregnancy even when the mother’s life is in danger. At least one pregnant Polish woman has died, reportedly because doctors waited too long to abort the fetus.
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