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BRUSSELS: A Polish woman who was denied an abortion in Poland took her case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday, citing what she described as a rising tide of opposition against women's rights in Poland after a conservative government won election last year.
The case comes at a sensitive time in Europe, where there is uncertainty about the attitude of the new Polish leadership, headed by the twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who campaigned on traditional Roman Catholic and family values toward such issues as abortion and homosexuality.
Alicja Tysiac, 35, an unemployed single mother of three children from Warsaw who suffers from severe myopia, appealed to the court that the Polish government had violated her rights after a doctor insisted in 2000 that she go ahead with the birth of her third child despite warnings from ophthalmologists that she could go blind.
"There is stigma here surrounding abortion," Wanda Nowiska, president of the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning, which is supporting the case, said in a telephone interview from the court in Strasbourg.
"There is a growing religious fundamentalism in the area," she said, referring to many of the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland.
Under Communism, Poland allowed relatively free access to abortion but after the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years ago the laws were toughened under pressure from the Catholic church, Nowiska said. Abortion is now allowed only if birth represents a threat to life or health, if the fetus is badly formed or if the pregnancy is a result of rape.
But even then social stigma surrounding abortion means that few doctors are willing to give permission, she continued.
She said that several doctors agreed with Tysiac that going ahead with the birth could affect her eyesight but were not prepared to put their diagnosis on paper.
She estimates that public pressure is such that fewer than 200 official abortions took place in Poland last year.
In 2000, Tysiac eventually won a referral but the gynecologist at a public hospital in Warsaw refused her request for an abortion After the birth of the child, now five, Tysiac's eyesight worsened, including a severe weakening of her retina, and "a panel of doctors concluded that her condition required treatment and daily assistance and declared her to be significantly disabled," according to documents in court Tuesday.
"Ms. Tysiac, who is raising her three children alone, is now registered as significantly disabled and on that account receives a monthly pension equivalent to ¤140," or $168, the court document said.
Tysiac wears thick glasses and is unable to see more than a meter and a half, or five feet, in front of her face, she said.
A Polish government official in Warsaw said Tuesday that it was too early to comment on the issue.
A spokesman for the European Court of Human Rights said a final judgment on the case would take three to four months. Whatever the ruling, both sides have the right of appeal.
International Herald Tribune
c.2005 I.H.T /iht.com
