An ultraconservative legal organisation has published a guide to encourage the prosecution in Poland of those who use, supply and advertise abortion pills, which are the main way that women terminate pregnancies in a country where abortion is almost completely banned.
Ordo Iuris – a Warsaw-based NGO that has been prominent in legal battles against sex education and what it calls “LGBT ideology”, as well as abortion – has promoted its new 30-page guide as a way to “stop the pills of death”.
“We are facing a huge problem involving the increased activity of abortion organisations with the aim of normalising the crime of aiding abortion,” said Magdalena Majkowska, a member of Ordo Iuris’s board, while presenting the publication.
After the introduction of a near-total ban on abortion last year, the number of legal abortions in 2021 dropped 90% compared to a year earlier. Of those that did take place, the vast majority were carried out in the 27 days before the ban came into force in late January.
However, it is estimated that tens of thousands more abortions take place outside the law, mainly through the use of abortion pills sent by post. An array of organisations and individuals both inside and outside Poland are involved in helping women procure such pills.
Ordo Iuris complains that, while such activities are illegal, they are happening “with the quiet consent of law enforcement agencies”. Majkowska says that, when her organisation submits notifications of such crimes, prosecutors generally refuse to initiate proceedings or later discontinue them without action.
As well as calling for tougher action against those who supply and advertise abortion pills, Ordo Iuris goes even further, also arguing that women who use abortion pills are breaking the law.
“In Poland, self-administered pharmacological abortion by a woman (an unauthorised person) should be considered illegal,” reads its legal guide.
That position stands in contrast to other legal opinions. The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights told Notes from Poland earlier this year that “women’s actions intending to terminate their pregnancy – whatever they might be – will never result in criminal liability”.
Under Article 157a of Poland’s criminal code, anyone who causes harm to an unborn child can face up to two years in prison but the mother of the child is specifically exempted from the law.
In April, the trial began of a pro-choice activist, Justyna Wydrzyńska, on charges of “providing a pregnant woman with help in terminating a pregnancy or induces her to do so”, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to three years.
Wydrzyńska had provided a pregnant woman, named only as Ania, with abortion pills. Ania’s husband discovered them and reported it to the police. Ania herself has not faced any charges. Ordo Iuris is participating in the legal proceedings “in order to protect the public and private interest”.
Earlier this year, Ordo Iuris carried out an “audit” of hospitals to ascertain whether they are providing abortions to refugees from Ukraine and, if so, whether they are taking the required legal steps to “verify if the woman is telling the truth that she was raped”. Rape is one of two grounds on which abortion is permitted in Poland.
It is also currently supporting a pharmacist who is challenging her punishment for refusing to fulfil a patient’s prescription for the morning-after pill, which she argued would violate her conscience.
Main image credit: Dawid Chalimoniuk / Agencja Gazeta
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
