A non-governmental organisation has opened Poland’s first ever abortion clinic despite Polish legislation that severely restricts abortion rights and protests from pro-life campaigners.
Polish law restricts termination of pregnancies to those that were caused by illegal acts such as rape or incest or when the life or health of the mother are at risk. It also criminalises those who assist in carrying out illegal abortions. That has led to the number of abortions in Poland being reduced to just a few hundred per year.
The new clinic, opened in Warsaw on International Women’s Day, March 9, by the pro-abortion group Abortion Dream Team does not actually provide medical services.
Instead it provides a “safe space” for women to take abortion pills that can be ordered in advance. It also offers pregnancy tests and advice on terminating pregnancies and facilitates the arrangement and funding of abortions outside of Poland.
The facility is located opposite Poland’s parliament building in a move organisers said they expected would put pressure on politicians from the centre-left ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk to fulfil its election promise to liberalise legislation on abortion.
“We were promised legal abortion but there is still no sign of it,” Abortion Dream Team stated, explaining why it had established the clinic.
“Politicians cannot keep their word, but we will do it for them. We will not wait idly by; we want access to abortion in Poland to be available now.”
Pro-abortion activists have been disappointed by the line taken by Tusk who has said he did not think the abortion law could be changed in the present parliament because a part of the coalition he leads, the centre-right Polish People’s Party, has refused to support abortion on demand.
Its members will only agree to a modest liberalisation allowing termination in cases of damage to the foetus but that compromise was not acceptable to The Left, another coalition party.
Tusk has instructed prosecutors to ignore a Constitutional court ruling that tightened the abortion law in 2020 to exclude any so-called eugenic abortions when the foetus was likely to be born disabled.
The opening of the clinic drew protests from pro-life groups and Conservative politicians with demonstrators armed with placards opposing abortion as a “death sentence” on innocent children gathering outside the facility.
Many were convinced its existence violated the law because, although a woman herself cannot be punished for having an unlawful abortion, anyone who helped her doing so could be sentenced to up to three years in prison.
Conservative legal affairs think-tank Ordo Iuris in 2022 published a set of guidelines for prosecutors on how to pursue those who advertised abortion pills. In 2023, that led to a conviction for Abortion Dream Team activist Justyna Wydrzyńska for her assisting a woman to terminate a pregnancy with the pills.
That conviction was quashed by a court of appeal in 2024 on the grounds that there was doubt over the legitimacy of the judge who presided over the case.
That was because he had been appointed during the time of the previous Conservative (PiS) government’s judicial reforms that were later challenged by European courts.
