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A FACEBOOK POST from Irish site TheLiberal.ie has been been shared hundreds of times since it was posted there on Sunday, 20 May linking to an article on their site, published the same day.
The social sharing and other engagement with the post chimes with the heightened focus on abortion legislation in this final week of the Eighth Amendment referendum campaign here.
However, a near-identical article was posted by the same site two years ago, so we’ve decided to take a closer look.
The claim: “Abortion debate re-opens in Poland after a Down Syndrome baby born alive during an abortion dies unaided screaming for an hour”
The facts: There are two claims in the headline – one that the abortion debate has been reopened in Poland this week, and one that the reason for this is a case of a botched abortion in which a child with Down’s Syndrome remained alive and screaming for an hour after the procedure.
Claim 1: The Liberal article with that headline was published on 20 May 2018, and says that the incident it reports happened in 2016 but that it has risen to the surface again, suggesting that this is because of the current referendum debate here.
From TheLiberal.ie:
However, the horrific story has again re-opened a national abortion debate in Poland over the past week – perhaps because of Ireland’s abortion upcoming abortion referendum on Friday.
While Polish media shows a marked increase in stories about the country’s abortion legislation this year, it does so (on Google trends) in March when there were protests against government proposals to limit an already restrictive set of abortion criteria there.
(The line at the end of this graph is dotted because data for the past week is not yet available. The previous three weeks which coincide with the referendum campaign proper here show no such increase in interest in the topic of abortion in Poland.)
It is also noteworthy that TheLiberal.ie first published the story on 25 March 2016 under a practically identical headline to that on the story published this week:
These are the only differences between the 2016 story and the story published last Sunday:
CONCLUSION: The claims that this story has resurfaced and gone viral in Poland and that this is because of the Irish referendum debate are FALSE. The re-publication on TheLiberal.ie at this time appears to be an internal editorial decision alone.
Claim 2: That “a Down Syndrome baby born alive during an abortion dies unaided screaming for an hour”.
The story referred to by TheLiberal.ie was first reported by a commercial TV broadcaster in Poland called Republika Television. This story, broadcast on 10 March 2016, is here. It is based on a copy of a letter sent by a Fr Ryszard Halwa, of a pro-life organisation called “The SOS Foundation in Defence of Conceived Life”. The letter, sent to the District Prosecutor’s Office of Warsaw, claims that they had received a report from anonymous employees at the Holy Family Hospital in Warsaw, detailing an abortion carried out legally under current Polish legislation.
The abortion, the letter claimed, was of a pregnancy “at about six months” on the grounds that the parents had received a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. The abortion, the letter goes on to claim, did not work and a live child was born but that it died after an hour, having shown signs of life, including “screaming”, having received no medical help.
The letter asked the prosecutor to investigate and prosecute if it finds that a crime has been committed.
A pro-life campaigner mentions the story again in Polish houses of parliament in October of that year, at a time when there were mass protests against proposals to further restrict abortion laws in the country. That campaigner says that the Patient Rights Ombudsman had investigated and, on consultation with consultants, found there had been no violation of the law.
CONCLUSION: Without further first-person accounts of the claims in the letter sent by a third-party to the District Prosecutor and the conclusion reached by the Patient Rights Ombudsman (stated here under parliamentary privilege), it is not possible to conclude the veracity of the details in TheLiberal report. TheLiberal report does not provide any further links or supporting evidence. The conclusion is UNPROVEN.
TheJournal.ie’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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So much unknown – who are these “foreign-backed terrorists” and why have they got it in for what was such a beautiful city.
@Anthony Clark: There are no foreign terrorists, years of boiling anger spilled over, the riots go out of control in Almaty and a few other cities.
The government is claiming they are foreign terrorists probably because the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) can only be evoked if a member country is attacked by an outside country, they invited in Russia and a few other member countries in to help with security. The real reason they are there I read is not to police the streets, they are there to threaten the police and national guard so they don’t switch over to the protestors
Calling rioters foreign terrorists is typical of Soviet and post-Soviet dictatorships, they then round up people and disappear them. There may be some credence that the violence in Almaty was a fight between factions in the ruling elite vying for power, but this might be just a wild rumour.
Here’s a description of the riots in Almaty by one of the rioters:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kazakhstan/comments/s0q0k7/witnesss_experience_about_the_protests/
Some Posts I found:
“Hey you all, I’ve made a post about how I couldn’t reach my XXXXXX who lives in XXXXXX. I’ve managed to reach some of his friends and they told me he got arrested. I honestly can’t believe that cause my brother is a very compliant guy, very obedient to the laws and even a bit paranoid about breaking rules. He wouldn’t even want to take me on the back of his bicycle when I visited last time cause it’s not allowed. So not a person I could see getting arrested rightfully. However last time there were protests in Russia they arrested random people too and I’m wondering if anything like that could have happened. … ”
“Sorry man, might be best if you stay away for a while though. Odds are fair you might get picked up just for being related. Good luck to you and all your loved ones.”
“I also fear that a very good friend of mine got arrested. I had contact with him on monday for a short time. He seemed to be fine. But since then nothing. First I thought it’s the internet not working again, but it seems to work in Almaty for some hours each day at least. He flew to KZ over the holidays to spend time with his family. As far as I can tell he was not involved in anything. They locked themselves in.”
@David Jordan: Hi David, you’ll probably appreciate these articles: This covers how Jihadis have been slipped into the country from Afghanistan – which explain the beheadings: https:// thecradle.co/Article/columns/5668?s=09
This refers to close links between the US and the recently deposed ruler, with details of US involvement in biological labs in Khazakstan: https:// asiatimes.com/2022/01/kazakhstan-becomes-toxic-graveyard-for-us-diplomacy/?s=09
If I might quote a line: “Why is Kazakhstan a sought-after partner? Simply put, the country provides unique access to ethnic Russian and Chinese groups as “specimens” for conducting field research involving highly pathogenic potential biological-warfare agents.”.
The Ruling elite have been incredibly corrupt as you say, but they like stashing their money in the West for some reason: https:// http://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-nazarbayev-family-wealth/31013097.html
@Kerrill Thornhill: There were no beheadings. That was an unverified claim from the dictatorship.
“All these talks of beheading…never a photo. I’m not saying they didn’t happen but anyone seen evidence of these? Beheading are very violent and almost wouldn’t fit the nature of this riot.”
“And yet a lot of people believe them without question. Its dangerous.” – Kazakh citizens.
Oh, the ONE biological lab near Alamty, 3 day old Russian propaganda.
“Russia claimed a possible pathogen leak occurred at military lab in Kazakhstan; Kazakhstan denies facility was seized by rioters”
“‘This is not true. The facility is being guarded,’ said the health ministry which is responsible for the Central Reference Laboratory, in Almaty.”
“Now miskovites will create 1001 lie to hold occupation of Kazakhstan.”
“This lab is a popular boogeyman among Putinbots.”
Cant get over the faux outrage on social media/FakeNews media over the numbers detained. This was an attempted coup involving what appears to be a violent element that came in from outside the country. ~20 police dead, >750 injured, government buildings, transport hubs were seized, etc. By contrast in the US, the Jan 6th protest was a protest that descended into a riot. Completely overblown. 1 person killed on the day at the riot (a protestor named Ashli Babbitt) yet well over 700 people were detained, many in solitary confinement for months for walking around the Capital.
God bless Kazakhstan
Dead right by Putin, take control and arrest these anarchists
@David Jordan: Hi David, you’ll probably appreciate these articles: This covers how Jihadis have been slipped into the country from Afghanistan – which explain the beheadings: https:// thecradle.co/Article/columns/5668?s=09
This refers to close links between the US and the recently deposed ruler, with details of US involvement in biological labs in Khazakstan: https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/kazakhstan-becomes-toxic-graveyard-for-us-diplomacy/?s=09
If I might quote a line: “Why is Kazakhstan a sought-after partner? Simply put, the country provides unique access to ethnic Russian and Chinese groups as “specimens” for conducting field research involving highly pathogenic potential biological-warfare agents.”.
The Ruling elite have been incredibly corrupt as you say, but they like stashing their money in the West for some reason: https:// http://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-nazarbayev-family-wealth/31013097.html
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