(Ordo Iuris) — Last week, the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture filed a report with the District Prosecutor’s Office in Wrocław on suspicion of a crime committed by Dr. Gizela Jagielska and the medical staff of the County Hospital Complex in Oleśnica. At the same time, the Chief Professional Liability Ombudsman received a complaint from the Ordo Iuris Institute against Dr. Jagielska, along with a request for the immediate suspension of her license to practice medicine. The case concerns the circumstances of an abortion performed in the 26th week of pregnancy, disclosed by the doctor herself in the media, as a result of which a live child was born and left without medical assistance until its death.

Both the notification to the prosecutor’s office and the complaint to the medical self-government are based, among other things, on the content of an interview with Dr. Gizela Jagielska published on May 15, 2025, on the Wysokie Obcasy portal, in which the doctor reveals:

“There was a brief moment when we did not use potassium chloride. I was present at one such abortion in the 26th week. … And let me say this: neither I nor anyone on my staff would ever want to participate in something like this again.”

Later in the interview, she describes the course of such procedures:

“The child is born and we wait for it to die. Of course, we provide palliative care. But that situation only reinforced our conviction that we cannot do this. It’s not what women come to us for.”

The doctor’s account shows that a situation arose in which a live-born child did not receive any treatment aimed at saving its life. Instead, only palliative care was provided, which would be appropriate for terminally ill patients whose lives cannot be reasonably prolonged by any available means. In the case of a premature baby born at 26 weeks of pregnancy who, as Jagielska herself points out, was born alive, the failure to provide any medical intervention may have meant deliberately exposing him to a painful death as a result of respiratory failure.

The Ordo Iuris Institute considers this to be extremely unethical and legally unacceptable conduct, which constitutes a crime of failing to provide assistance to a person in immediate danger of death (Article 162 § 1 of the Polish Penal Code) and exposing a person under one’s care to the risk of death (Article 160 § 2 of the Penal Code). At the same time, it emphasized that in the case of the birth of a live child—regardless of the circumstances—it has full human rights and must be treated as a patient requiring treatment in accordance with current medical knowledge.

READ: Doctors convicted for pregnant woman’s death in case leftists blame on Poland’s abortion ban

The Ordo Iuris Institute points out that in the event of termination of pregnancy after the 22nd week, it is the duty of the attending physician—in accordance with the recommendations of the Polish Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians—to immediately notify a neonatologist, i.e., a specialist who should be ready to provide assistance to the newborn. Meanwhile, the account presented in the interview shows that such assistance was not provided. The newborn was only given so-called “palliative care,” which in this context meant waiting for him or her to die.

The Ordo Iuris Institute comments on the matter unequivocally:

“Since Dr. Jagielska talks about such events publicly, it means she is convinced of her own impunity. As a society, we cannot accept a situation in which a doctor waits for a newborn to die and then talks about it in the media. Such people should not be allowed to practice medicine, even temporarily, which is why we are demanding that Dr. Jagielska’s license to practice be suspended for the duration of the proceedings, which can be done by both the prosecutor and the medical council.”

Ordo Iuris also emphasizes that this is not the only controversial case in which Dr. Jagielska has been involved. In April of this year, the media reported on the case of a child who was killed in the womb during the ninth month of pregnancy by Dr. Gizela Jagielska, who administered a potassium chloride injection directly into the heart.

In this case, as argued by lawyer Magdalena Majkowska, director of the Ordo Iuris Litigation Center and member of the Board of the Ordo Iuris Institute, we were dealing not so much with abortion as with murder.

The doctor herself, in an interview with Kanał Zero quoted both in the notification to the prosecutor’s office and in the complaint to the Chief Professional Responsibility Ombudsman, stated that:

“We must not confuse termination of pregnancy and abortion. Abortion is the termination of pregnancy resulting in stillbirth or miscarriage, so it is not the termination of pregnancy at a certain week with the birth of a live newborn, because it is absolutely not the same thing.”

As explained in an analysis published (in Polish) in May by Katarzyna Gęsiak, director of the Ordo Iuris Center for Medical Law and Bioethics, under Polish law, the right to terminate a pregnancy does not give the right to actively kill a child or to deny it medical assistance.

The complaint filed today with the Chief Professional Responsibility Ombudsman points out that Dr. Jagielska’s actions violated a number of fundamental principles of the medical profession, including the obligation to protect the life and health of the patient, regardless of their age, stage of development, or circumstances of birth. The Code of Medical Ethics cited in the complaint states explicitly that a doctor may not use their knowledge in a manner contrary to their vocation, and that salus aegroti suprema lex esto—“the good of the patient is the highest law”—should be the overriding principle of every clinical decision.

“We cannot leave this matter without a response. We demand that disciplinary proceedings be initiated, that the right to practice medicine be suspended, and that all those who calmly watched the child die in agony be punished. Dr. Gizela Jagielska should not be allowed to practice medicine under such circumstances—neither now nor in the future,” emphasizes the Ordo Iuris Institute.

Reprinted with permission from Ordo Iuris.