By Anna Gmiterek-Zabłocka, Radio TOK FM (tekst dostępny również w wersji polskiej)
The days of illegal – and often unsafe – abortions in backstreet clinics are long gone. Instead, a host of NGOs and activists help women obtain self-administered abortion pills, noting that the recent near-total abortion ban has increased awareness and interest in such service. That has led to a backlash from conservative groups, who are calling for the law to be toughened to prevent and more severely punish the distribution of such pills.
It is not difficult to find adverts online for gynaecologists who offer “discreet”, “safe” services “without problems”. Probably for legal reasons, the word “abortion” does not appear. We called one of the numbers.
The person who answered asks what stage the pregnancy is at. She proposes a medical abortion, meaning purchasing abortion pills. This, we are told, is a safe and effective method that can be used up to the 12th week of pregnancy. There is nothing to worry about, she reassures us, saying that women who have used this method have been satisfied. The price? “Cheapest from me. 800 zloty,” we hear.
None of the people we call offers us abortion in a clinic. “In Poland it’s been more than 10 years since we last talked about the abortion underground we used to know,” Krystyna Kacpura from FEDERA, the Federation for Women and Family Planning, tells Notes from Poland.
Women’s rights organisations stress that in Poland today procedures performed in illegal clinics, without adherence to hygiene rules and leaving some women with complications and health problems, are no more.
“Nowadays there is medical abortion, meaning pills. This is available to women in early pregnancy and recommended by WHO [the World Health Organisation] as a method that doesn’t cause side effects for women’s health,” Kacpura explains.
WHO guidelines – first issued in 2012 and reissued in March this year – emphasise that medical abortion, if performed in accordance with recommendations, is a safe procedure. WHO makes clear that the medication used for medical abortion (misoprostol, mifepristone) should be available at the primary healthcare level.
Women’s rights groups are also keen to emphasise that ordering and taking such pills is not an offence in Poland.
“The key thing is the fact that women’s actions intending to terminate their pregnancy – whatever they might be – will never result in criminal liability,” says Jarosław Jagura, a lawyer from the Helsinski Foundation for Human Rights. “So if a patient has a termination in this or another way, she will not face any criminal penalties. From a legal point of view, it is completely safe for her.”
Women are able to order such pills themselves, and also have the right – by telephone or email – to contact women’s organisations, Jagura adds. Problems may only arise when a third party – for example a friend or husband – helps to buy the tablets. “By Polish law, complicity is punishable,” he explains.
That means that selling or otherwise facilitating the procurement of abortion pills can be an offence – and this is a law that conservative groups want the authorities to enforce more strongly.
“Despite the existing legal basis for the prosecution of the online sales of abortifacients, in practice such activity goes unpunished,” wrote Katarzyna Gęsiak, director of the Centre for Medical Law and Bioethics at Ordo Iuris, an influential ultraconservative legal group. Such sales, Gęsiak argues, are a crime as defined in article 152 paragraph 2 of the criminal code, which refers to the offence of giving help to terminate a pregnancy.
Gęsiak also points out that the fact that abortion pills are often sent to women from abroad should not be a hurdle in prosecuting and holding accountable the people supplying them.
“In the case of online crimes, it is justified to assume that the site of operation of the perpetrator of the formal offence is both the place where the perpetrator was residing when carrying out the prohibited act and the location of the computer system that the perpetrator interacted with,” the Ordo Iuris analysis argues.
Ordo Iuris has submitted numerous notifications to the prosecutor’s office on the possibility of women’s organisations committing an offence. In March, the trial of the activist Justyna Wydrzyńska from Abortion Dream Team, a pro-choice group, began. She is accused of assisting with terminations, and if convicted could face three years’ imprisonment. Wydrzyńska’s case could become an important precedent.
Ordo Iuris admits, however, that the laws in the Polish criminal code “do not constitute a real obstacle preventing trade in pills used for self-administration of abortion”.
The organisation would therefore like to tighten the laws on this question and “add to Polish a legislation its own definition of the beginning of pregnancy differing from the one accepted by WHO, and also reflecting the constitutional rule of protection of human life from the moment of conception”.
Furthermore, Ordo Iuris has launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund its “court battle against abortionists”. It argues that “the abortion underground in our country has spread and grown out of control because of the sense of impunity”, calling pro-choice activists’ work a “lucrative abortion business”.
Pro-choice organisations like Women on Web or Women Help Women indeed offer pills for carrying out abortions at home. While some women pay a donation of between €70 and €90, others – including when lethal defects in the foetus have been diagnosed – receive them for free.
It is also true that some people, including doctors, try to make money from medical abortions. Women often do not know that alternatives are available, and pay for these services.
“Some gynaecologists offer medical abortions to their patients,” says Natalia Broniarczyk from Abortion Without Borders. “As a rule these are medical clinics in large cities. They ask 1,000-1,500 zloty for a prescription. That annoys us, because these are people who make money out of it.”
There have also been cases of somebody setting up a website and offering abortion pills for a few hundred zloty, but in fact only redirecting people to the site of an organisation helping women for free or for a voluntary donation.
Broniarczyk told Notes from Poland that, paradoxically, one could say that the Constitutional Tribunal ruling that introduced the near-total abortion ban has in fact contributed to increasing women’s awareness of abortion.
“The decision affected the visibility of aid groups and such organisations as ours. We are observing an enormous increase in enquiries. Women who need an abortion have found out, to a greater extent than before, that they can get help. They know where to call and where to look for support.”
Abortion Without Borders estimate that every day, women they have provided with information and support carry out around 90 medical abortions. This is probably less than a third of all such procedures, as many women also buy pills online of their own accord, without support from an organisation.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, FEDERA launched a helpline for women from Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of whom have fled to Poland. Those calling it can speak to a Ukrainian gynaecologist who herself fled the war, who informs them what rights they have in Poland, who can help them, and how. Calls have been coming in from women who were the victims of rape during the war.
“We inform them that women in Poland don’t have to be afraid of ordering pills for themselves,” says Kacpura from FEDERA. She also points out that abortion in cases of rape is legal in Poland, although it requires a great deal of perseverance from women. Proving rape entails submitting to an interview by the prosecutor or police, which is usually a very traumatic experience for victims.
Ordo Iuris have also become involved in this subject. An MP for The Left, Katarzyna Kotula, revealed on Twitter that the organisation was writing to hospitals to request access to public information.
Ordo Iuris activists want to know how many such procedures have taken place on Polish women, and how many on citizens of other countries. They are also demanding information on whether the prosecutor’s office was informed about any specific abortions as a result of rape or gave an opinion on these cases.
Abortion Without Borders also receives telephone calls from Ukrainian women who wish to terminate their planned and wanted pregnancy because they do not know what will happen with the war.
“They feel uncertainty and don’t want to give birth in this situation,” says Broniarczyk. “At the start of the war we had 250 people like that, two of whom went abroad, and the rest took abortion pills with our help.”
“It is important to stress the fact that a woman who carries out an abortion, orders the pills herself, takes them herself or arranges to go abroad, is not criminally liable. She is 100% safe,” adds Jagura from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.”
Translated by Ben Koschalka
Main image credit: Adrianna Bochenek/Agencja Wyborcza.pl
