Poland: Three years imprisonment for abortion pills?

In Poland, the stricter abortion law could be applied for the first time: The activist Justyna Wydrzyńska faces three years in prison because she is said to have given an unwanted pregnant woman an abortion drug.

Justyna Wydrzyńska is a pregnancy companion, mother, abortion activist and is now at the center of a landmark court case: On Thursday she has to appear in court in Warsaw as a prominent defendant.

Jan Pallokat
ARD Studio Warsaw

There, for the first time, the strict Polish abortion law could take full effect. Because it is being negotiated whether Wydrzyńska illegally helped another woman with an abortion. If found guilty, the activist faces up to three years in prison.

Abortion is de facto banned in Poland. Abortion legislation is among the strictest in Europe. In October 2020, the Polish Constitutional Court ruled that abortions due to severe fetal malformations are also illegal.

This eliminated one of the few exceptions for abortions. Abortions are legal in Poland – as well as assistance – only after rape and incest or when the mother’s life is in danger.

“I know what she’s going through”

The basis of the charges against Wydrzyńska are the Polish criminal code and pharmaceutical law. Specifically, the public prosecutor’s office accuses her of having sent at least ten abortion tablets to another woman.

At a first court hearing in April, Wydrzyńska also did not deny sending the pills. She “decided to do so very spontaneously” and provided the pregnant woman with her own personal pills. She wanted “to help this person, because I know what she’s experiencing,” said the 47-year-old, who is open about her own abortion.

Wydrzyńska also refers to the special circumstances of the case. The woman, who was apparently unintentionally pregnant, reported to Wydrzyńska’s organization “Abortion Without Borders” in early 2020.

There the woman, who is said to have been in her twelfth week of pregnancy, reported that she had ordered abortion pills but that they had not arrived. In addition, she is being blackmailed by her abusive husband into carrying the child. That’s why Wydrzyńska decided to send the woman pills for an abortion.

House search a year later

More than a year after the incident, in June 2021, according to Amnesty International, police were on Wydrzyńska’s doorstep. During a house search, officers confiscated tablets, computers and mobile phones from Wydrzyńska and her children. Apparently the husband of the woman to whom she sent the pills reported Wydrzyńska.

For many observers, the significance of the court hearing goes beyond Justyna Wydrzyńska’s individual case. Because in the past few months and years, opponents of the strict Polish abortion law had protested loudly but in vain against tightening of the law.

Protests expected in front of courtroom

Many demonstrators are also expected in front of the court at the trial against Wydrzyńska. Natalia Broniarczyk from the NGO “Abortion Dream Team”, to which Wydrzyńska belongs, considers the trial to be a “political matter”. She and her colleagues say they are afraid that as abortion activists in Poland they feel “persecuted”.

Left-wing MP Katarzyna Kotula also considers the process to be a “political process”. The prosecutor’s office had decided to “organize a hunt for women who simply help other women”.

Representatives of the arch-conservative lawyers’ collective “Ordo Iuris” will also be present in court. They act as advocates for unborn life.

And other opponents of abortion, such as Marek Wilczewski of the Life and Family Foundation, are following the court case against Wydrzyńska closely. He is calling for further changes in the law so that, he says, “such activities can be prosecuted and stopped” and “you can be in can in no way encourage abortion, assist in it, facilitate it”.