“I bought a Foley catheter at the pharmacy. I was determined to terminate the pregnancy regardless of the consequences for myself, even if I had to do it with a wire. It was instinct. I was fighting for my life.” In an interview with OKO.Press, Ania, to whom Justyna Wydrzyńska gave abortion pills, tells what really happened.
“The case aroused great interest as an example of violation of women’s rights. This is also how we wrote about it in OKO.press,” writes journalist Magdalena Chrzczonowicz. “Media from all over the world came to the trial. But no one knew how Ania experienced it and how her pregnancy ended. So far, she had not given interviews nor spoken to the media. For the first time, Ania tells her story in OKO.Press, showing us special trust. We talked for a good three hours at the Abortion Dream Team headquarters.”
Ania begins: ”This story begins in December 2019 when I became pregnant for the second time. I had a 3-year-old child at the time. It was a wanted and planned pregnancy. I wanted my child to have a sibling.
“From the beginning of the pregnancy, I felt that I was in it, I had extremely strong so-called pregnancy symptoms. I knew what awaited me because I remembered what it was like in my previous pregnancy. But this time I vomited more and more. I ate and drank less and less. I felt a constant pain in my stomach and knew it was only going to get worse. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain.
“I was in a terrible mental state. And physically I was getting worse. I vomited several times a day, mostly bile. I couldn’t even go to the toilet. I regurgitated all the liquids and foods I had taken. Even the smallest sip of water. I didn’t get out of bed. I lay on my right side all day because that was the best way to stop vomiting. Stomach pain worsened after vomiting. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain. I managed to nap for 3-4 hours a day. My entire throat was burning from vomiting.
[Editor’s Note: Ania’s story is heartbreaking, powerful and life-affirming. Please read it – all of it. The website is in Polish but it will offer to translate from Polish. If you didn’t understand before what it means to have an ectopic pregnancy with two embryos growing outside the womb, which urgently had to be terminated, and meanwhile would cause non-stop terrible pain and kill her unless she had emergency treatment, you will understand when you have read it. You will also see how a law making abortion illegal, even though it should not have been applied in her case because the continuing pregnancy would have killed her, the life-saving purpose of the many doctors who saw her had disappeared, and they would have let her die rather than terminate the pregnancy, for reasons best known to themselves.]
SOURCE: Oko Press, by Magdalena Chrzczonowicz,17 April 2023