Justyna Wydrzynska sentenced to community service after telling court she sent pills to victim of domestic violence
Weronika Strzyżyńska and agencies in WarsawTue 14 Mar 2023
A court in Poland has convicted an activist for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills, sentencing her to eight months of community service in a landmark case over abortion rights in the predominantly Catholic country.
“I do not feel that I am facing the court alone,” said Justyna Wydrzynska at the hearing on Tuesday. “Behind me are my friends and hundreds of women I have not had the luck to meet yet.”
Along with Malta, Poland’s anti-abortion laws are among the most restrictive in Europe, allowing for termination only in the event of incest, rape or a risk to the mother’s health. Helping a woman obtain an abortion is also illegal.
JustynaWydrzynska, a member of Abortion Dream Team (ADT), an activist group helping Poles access drugs to facilitate terminations abroad, had faced up to three years in prison.
She told the court in Warsaw that she had sent pills to a woman who was a victim of domestic violence, according to the Facebook page of ADT.
The woman had called an abortion line asking for help with terminating her pregnancy. Activists referred Wydrzynska to the case, after which she mailed drugs she already had at home to her.
“The pills which I had for my personal use and which I had sent to Ania are the safest way to terminate a pregnancy in Poland at the moment,” the pressure group quoted Wydrzynska as saying.
“I didn’t want Ania to risk her life by taking dangerous steps since a solution is so easy and medically safe.”
While abortion was freely available in Poland under the communist regime, the procedure became heavily restricted in 1993. Further restrictions were introduced in January 2021, making the procedure legal only in cases of a crime, such as rape or incest, or when the pregnancy risks the woman’s life or health.
However, the law criminalises only abortion-providers, meaning that self-managed abortions – a popular method of terminating pregnancies – are not criminalised. ADT helped more than 9,000 people in Poland access medical abortion in 2022.
ADT activists are careful to work within the limits of Polish law. They give advice on how to order abortion tablets from countries such as the Netherlands, where the medication can be legally purchased. ADT activists do not handle any packages themselves.
Ania’s case was an exception, Wydrzyńska said. The woman told her that she was pregnant and facing domestic violence. Her husband had prevented her from travelling to Germany to access an abortion. Her pregnancy was advancing and due to the early days of the Covid pandemic she did not know if she would be able to obtain tablets from abroad.
“I knew that Ania was in an extremely desperate situation, and I had a set of pills for my own personal use,” Wydrzyńska said in court. “I do not feel guilty. Hearing the details of Ania’s situation in this courtroom has only strengthened my conviction that I made the right choice.”
The package with the medication was found by Ania’s husband who notified the police. Days later Ania miscarried.skip past newsletter promotion
Wydrzyńska said she would appeal against the sentence.
”We are strong, and together we are even stronger,” ADT wrote in a public statement. “We will never stop supporting each other and we won’t stop helping with abortions.”
Margolis, from Human Rights Watch, said: “This alarming and appalling ruling demands action from the European Union to stop Poland’s cruel and concerted targeting of reproductive rights and their defenders … Poland’s government has shown that it will go to dangerous lengths in its attack on women’s rights.”
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Keina Yoshida, a senior legal adviser at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement: “Her prosecution sets a dangerous precedent for the targeting of human rights defenders in Poland who are working to advance reproductive rights and challenge Poland’s de facto ban on abortion.”
Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said: “Today’s conviction marks a depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland, a rollback for which women and girls – and those who defend their rights – are paying a high price.”
She added: “Justyna should have never been put on trial in the first place because what she did should never be a crime.
“By supporting a woman who asked for help, Justyna showed compassion. By defending the right to safe abortion in Poland, Justyna showed courage. Today’s craven judgment shows neither. The conviction must be overturned.”
Weronika Strzyżyńska and agencies in WarsawTue 14 Mar 2023
A court in Poland has convicted an activist for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills, sentencing her to eight months of community service in a landmark case over abortion rights in the predominantly Catholic country.
“I do not feel that I am facing the court alone,” said Justyna Wydrzynska at the hearing on Tuesday. “Behind me are my friends and hundreds of women I have not had the luck to meet yet.”
Along with Malta, Poland’s anti-abortion laws are among the most restrictive in Europe, allowing for termination only in the event of incest, rape or a risk to the mother’s health. Helping a woman obtain an abortion is also illegal.
JustynaWydrzynska, a member of Abortion Dream Team (ADT), an activist group helping Poles access drugs to facilitate terminations abroad, had faced up to three years in prison.
She told the court in Warsaw that she had sent pills to a woman who was a victim of domestic violence, according to the Facebook page of ADT.
The woman had called an abortion line asking for help with terminating her pregnancy. Activists referred Wydrzynska to the case, after which she mailed drugs she already had at home to her.
“The pills which I had for my personal use and which I had sent to Ania are the safest way to terminate a pregnancy in Poland at the moment,” the pressure group quoted Wydrzynska as saying.
“I didn’t want Ania to risk her life by taking dangerous steps since a solution is so easy and medically safe.”
While abortion was freely available in Poland under the communist regime, the procedure became heavily restricted in 1993. Further restrictions were introduced in January 2021, making the procedure legal only in cases of a crime, such as rape or incest, or when the pregnancy risks the woman’s life or health.
However, the law criminalises only abortion-providers, meaning that self-managed abortions – a popular method of terminating pregnancies – are not criminalised. ADT helped more than 9,000 people in Poland access medical abortion in 2022.
ADT activists are careful to work within the limits of Polish law. They give advice on how to order abortion tablets from countries such as the Netherlands, where the medication can be legally purchased. ADT activists do not handle any packages themselves.
Ania’s case was an exception, Wydrzyńska said. The woman told her that she was pregnant and facing domestic violence. Her husband had prevented her from travelling to Germany to access an abortion. Her pregnancy was advancing and due to the early days of the Covid pandemic she did not know if she would be able to obtain tablets from abroad.
“I knew that Ania was in an extremely desperate situation, and I had a set of pills for my own personal use,” Wydrzyńska said in court. “I do not feel guilty. Hearing the details of Ania’s situation in this courtroom has only strengthened my conviction that I made the right choice.”
The package with the medication was found by Ania’s husband who notified the police. Days later Ania miscarried.skip past newsletter promotion
Wydrzyńska said she would appeal against the sentence.
”We are strong, and together we are even stronger,” ADT wrote in a public statement. “We will never stop supporting each other and we won’t stop helping with abortions.”
Margolis, from Human Rights Watch, said: “This alarming and appalling ruling demands action from the European Union to stop Poland’s cruel and concerted targeting of reproductive rights and their defenders … Poland’s government has shown that it will go to dangerous lengths in its attack on women’s rights.”
SNP leadership candidates urged to commit to abortion clinic buffer zones
Keina Yoshida, a senior legal adviser at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement: “Her prosecution sets a dangerous precedent for the targeting of human rights defenders in Poland who are working to advance reproductive rights and challenge Poland’s de facto ban on abortion.”
Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said: “Today’s conviction marks a depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland, a rollback for which women and girls – and those who defend their rights – are paying a high price.”
She added: “Justyna should have never been put on trial in the first place because what she did should never be a crime.
“By supporting a woman who asked for help, Justyna showed compassion. By defending the right to safe abortion in Poland, Justyna showed courage. Today’s craven judgment shows neither. The conviction must be overturned.”
U$A
Abortion pill: the women of the 'resistance'
Issued on: 14/03/2023 -
A video grab from the documentary "Plan C" about efforts to ensure access to abortion pills to women in the United States © Handout / Dinky Pictures Production/AFP
Washington (AFP) – It is a documentary that evokes the underground abortion networks of the 1960s but the story involves the present day.
"Plan C," airing this week at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, is about a group of risk-taking women determined to provide access to a safe method of abortion.
Their tool: the abortion pill.
"Plan C" is both the name of the documentary and the organization at the center of the film.
It traces the uphill battle faced by the women between 2019 and 2022 to make the abortion pill more widely available to women in need.
On the one hand, the pandemic expanded the use of telemedicine and allowed for the abortion pill to be dispatched by mail.
On the other hand, abortion -- and the pill -- have now been banned in about a dozen states following a US Supreme Court ruling last year.
"Unfortunately, the anti-abortion folks have largely won," "Plan C" director Tracy Droz Tragos told AFP.
And, she added, "we haven't hit rock bottom here in the United States."
"But more folks know that medication abortion exists, more folks are resisting and making sure that people have access to it," she said. "So there is a workaround to it, there is an answer back."
Plan C, the organization, was founded by two women, Francine Coeytaux and Elisa Wells, in 2015 to disseminate information about the abortion pill, also known as RU 486.
Plan A is contraception. Plan B is the "morning after" pill which is taken by a women after intercourse to avoid becoming pregnant.
Plan C is abortion.
Coeytaux and Wells began their efforts by testing pills that could be purchased on the black market on the internet to verify that they were authentic.
If so, they listed them on their site, plancpills.org
'Like running a drug cartel'
During the pandemic, with the abortion pills becoming more difficult to find, they put out a call for doctors willing to prescribe them by telemedicine and send them to patients by mail.
"After talking to, you know, like 150 providers, we ended up with maybe five," Wells told AFP.
Plan C provided them with technical help setting up telemedicine businesses or the cost of medical licenses.
The doctors were operating in a judicial grey area until the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the abortion pill can indeed by mailed to patients.
That gave rise to a number of telemedicine services.
In June 2022, however, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion giving states the freedom to set their own rules.
Even as access to abortion pills became more restricted, a supplier agreed to continue to send them to Republican-led states where abortion had been banned, notably Texas.
An underground network formed.
"It's like running a drug cartel, in order to help people," said a woman in the film who remained anonymous to protect her identity.
Fear is palpable throughout the movie -- fear for the women using the pills and fear for those who are helping them.
Fear too for what might happen if the flow of pills is cut off entirely and women seeking to end a pregnancy are left with no solution.
Details of how the network operates are deliberately not revealed.
Faces are blurred, voices disguised and locations obscured.
"The fact that it has to feel like this nefarious underground thing is unconscionable," Droz Tragos said. "It's a tragedy."
"I hope we did enough and those folks stay safe," she added.
'A form of resistance'
Finding a platform to distribute a film on such a hot-button issue has been difficult.
Some said it was "too political" and they needed to be "nonpartisan," said Droz Tragos, whose previous documentary about abortion was met with critical acclaim.
The director said she hopes "Plan C" delivers a message of hope to those who watch it, that they come away with the understanding that "they're not alone, that there is a network there to provide an option if they need it."
Since the film was made, another threat has emerged: a conservative federal judge in Texas is weighing whether to impose a national ban on the abortion pill, which was approved by the FDA more than two decades ago and has been proven to be safe and effective.
"We remain hopeful that even in the face of these unjust restrictions that access is possible and will continue to be possible," Wells said. "We believe that it's a form of resistance and that it will prevail."
© 2023 AFP
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