Tuesday, February 07, 2006
POLISH WOMAN SUES OVER ABORTION DENIAL
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.
Continue reading...
The article explains that she was told by three opthalmologists that she would lose her eyesight through retinal hemorrhage if she carried to term, and that she is now the single mother of three who cannot see beyond 12 feet away
I have a couple of questions...
1. Why is she a single mother? Did her husband die after he fathered this last child?
2. Why wasn't the baby delivered sooner considering that it was a C-section delivery? Or is it that the C-section took place early to attempt to head off the blindness, but was not successful, in which case an abortion would not have been successful either?
3. When the EU court gets involved, do they have the power to force abortion on Poland? The article says no. If not, then why is she going to court? Money? In any case, it's an interesting development.
