Far-right European Parliament lawmaker and long-shot Polish presidential candidate Grzegorz Braun is dealing with a possible investigation after he stormed a hospital on Wednesday and threatened a physician with a citizen’s arrest for performing a authorized late-term abortion.
Gizela Jagielska stated she was signing some administrative paperwork when a crowd of about 30 males, led by Braun, burst into the hospital round 11 a.m. She stated the boys surrounded her, stopped her from leaving and advised her she needs to be arrested.
“He insulted me, he known as me a serial assassin,” Jagielska advised POLITICO, describing Braun’s actions, which have been condemned by each the Polish justice minister and the nation’s equality minister.
“He pushed me once I needed to get out of the room.”
In a video posted by the lawmaker, Braun stated he was on the Oleśnica District Hospital to arrest Jagielska after she carried out an abortion on a fetus with uncommon skeletal dysplasia, which severely endangered the lifetime of the mom.
The member of the European Parliament may be seen getting into the hospital, flashing his European Parliament badge. Declaring he would enact a “citizen’s arrest” for the “crime of taking a life,” Braun adopted Jagielska across the workplace asking the opposite males to name the police.
The far-right, unbiased MEP, who’s operating within the Might Polish presidential election, isn’t new to controversy, each in Brussels and at house. He famously disrupted a minute of silence throughout a particular plenary session to recollect Holocaust victims, used a hearth extinguisher to vandalize a menorah lit for Hanukkah within the Polish parliament, and vandalized a Christmas tree adorned with baubles bearing EU and Ukrainian flags.
He was joined by Polish MP Roman Fritz, in what he on social media known as a “parliamentary intervention.”
On Thursday, the Regional Prosecutor’s Workplace in Wrocław introduced it’s going to open an investigation into the incident on the hospital.
POLITICO reached out to Braun however didn’t hear again by the point of publication.
Jagielska stated performing abortions in Poland has at all times been exhausting, however issues have gotten harder lately.
The far-right nationalist Legislation and Justice (PiS) authorities dominated Poland from 2015 to 2023, tightening the nation’s already very restrictive abortion guidelines. In 2020, they enabled a near-total ban on abortion, permitting the process solely in circumstances of rape or incest, or if the lifetime of the girl is endangered. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s new authorities has tried to ease the strict laws however has encountered stiff opposition.
“There’s a lot politics in it,” Jagielska stated. “Politicians modified nevertheless it didn’t assist a lot.”
Nonetheless, authorities officers have been fast to denounce the MEP’s actions.
Braun’s conduct “exceeds all moral and maybe additionally authorized boundaries” and “the prosecutor’s workplace should react rapidly and firmly,” Polish Justice Minister Adam Bodnar stated Thursday.
For 2 hours, the boys surrounded Jagielska, she stated, stopping her from doing her job.
“These are acts of terror in opposition to sufferers, medical doctors, and hospital directors,” Poland’s Minister for Equality Katarzyna Kotula advised the TVN24 information channel.
Jagielska isn’t new to abortion protesters. As a physician performing abortions in one of many international locations with the strictest abortion legal guidelines in Europe, she has seen her justifiable share of pro-life demonstrations and on-line hate.
Her hospital attracts crowds of pro-lifers no less than a couple of times per week, she stated. However on Wednesday issues escalated past something she had skilled earlier than.
“Now we have had many, many pro-life demonstrations in entrance of the hospital for years, nevertheless it by no means has occurred that these folks got here to the hospital,” she stated.
Police stated they have been known as to the scene when “a gaggle of unauthorized folks entered the hospital” and “disturbed the operation of the medical facility and the peace of sufferers,” they stated in a publish on social media.
Finally, police satisfied the boys to go away.
“The scariest half was that I used to be trapped within the higher room, and downstairs there have been pregnant ladies, there have been ladies within the supply room, and I couldn’t get again to see what was occurring within the ward,” stated Jagielska.
Bartosz Brzeziński contributed reporting.