Polish activist on trial for “helping terminate pregnancy” faces up to three years in prison

A pro-choice activist is to face trial next week on charges of helping with conducting an abortion, a crime that carries a potential sentence of up to three years in prison in Poland, which has some of Europe’s strictest abortion laws.

The case has been criticised by Amnesty International, which has called on the Polish authorities to drop the charges and “fully decriminalise access to abortion”.

The accused, Justyna Wydrzyńska, is a member of a collective known as Abortion Dream Team, which helps women in Poland who want to terminate their pregnancies.

In the case in question, a 12-weeks-pregnant woman, named only as Ania, had contacted the group seeking help to travel abroad for an abortion. But her husband forced her to remain in Poland, so instead Wydrzyńska provided Ania with abortion pills, reports Radio Zet. The husband discovered them and informed the police.

Possession of abortion-inducing medication is not punishable in Poland, but anyone “who provides a pregnant woman with help in terminating a pregnancy or induces her to do so” can face up to three years in prison under a law introduced in 1997.

“I didn’t even think about the consequences,” Wydrzyńska told Radio Zet. “It was an impulse straight from the heart. I felt that if I have a tool that can help someone, this is what I will do.”

Sabrina Walasek, a lawyer representing Abortion Dream Team, argues that, although “sending abortion pills to another person can technically constitute a criminal offence”, Wydrzyńska’s actions “were not socially harmful and should not be punished”.

Prosecutors disagreed, however, and launched an investigation. In June last year, police searched Wydrzyńska’s home, confiscating pills, a computer, pen drives and mobile phones belonging to Wydrzyńska and her children, says Amnesty.

During the search, “medication containing substance triggering womb muscle contractions, which result in expelling of its contents”, were found, said prosecutors, quoted by TVP Info. In November, they filed charges against Wydrzyńska. Her trial is due to begin next Friday, 8 April.

Under Poland’s abortion law at the time when Wydrzyńska helped Ania, terminations were only permitted in three cases: if the pregnancy threatened the mother’s health or life; if it resulted from a criminal act (such as rape or incest); or if a severe birth defect was detected in the foetus.

That law, already one of the strictest in Europe, was tightened further at the start of last year, when the last of those three cases was removed. Given that abortions due to birth defects had previously accounted for over 90% of legal terminations in Poland, the new law amounts to a near-total ban on abortion.

That change – which was introduced by the Constitutional Tribunal, a body widely seen as being under the influence of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party – prompted the biggest protests in Poland’s post-communist history.

Walasek stresses that, “according to international standards, [abortion] is…a fundamental human right”, so “we should consider the legitimacy of punishing someone for help in executing these rights”.

Amnesty International has likewise called on the Polish authorities to not only drop the charges against Wydrzyńska, but also “refrain from further reprisals against activists campaigning for sexual and reproductive rights” and “fully decriminalise access to abortion in Poland”.

Women’s rights groups argue that the new abortion law has in any case not significantly reduced the number of women obtaining terminations. Instead, it is forcing more to travel abroad for abortions or to seek them illegally (and sometimes unsafely) in Poland itself.

PiS has long pledged to end what it calls “eugenic abortion”. Its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, said he would “strive to ensure that even very difficult pregnancies, when the child is condemned to death, is severely deformed, will end in birth, so that the child can be christened, buried, given a name”.

Opinion polling has regularly shown that a small minority of the Polish public support the new tougher abortion law, and that in fact a much higher proportion favour liberalisation. The largest group, however, favours returning to the situation that existed before the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling.

Main image credit: Tomasz Stanczak / Agencja Gazeta

Agnieszka Wądołowska

Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Duży Format, Midrasz and Kultura Liberalna