Yet as examples from across the country indicate, what the law allows is not actually what is happening in practice. Now women can terminate a pregnancy only if the women’s life or health is at risk (including mental health risks with a psychiatric diagnosis) or if there is reasonable suspicion that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Abortion has been illegal in the country since 1993, but a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, which went into effect the next year, removed one of the exceptions to the law-fetal abnormalities-and imposed a near-total ban on abortion. It is likely, reproductive-rights advocates say, that these women would be alive if not for Poland's increasingly restrictive abortion laws. Janusz Kucharski also lost his partner Justyna to sepsis in the fifth month of a pregnancy. Krzysztof Sowinski has cried every day since his wife Marta, who was five months pregnant, died of sepsis in 2022 he believes doctors put Marta’s life in danger by not giving them the option to terminate the pregnancy while the fetus’ heart was still beating. This project was supported by the Pulitzer Center
