The activist risked up to three years in prison for having “provided assistance” for this abortion and “having marketed drugs without authorization”. She was eventually sentenced to community service.
A Polish activist was sentenced on Tuesday by a Warsaw court to community service for helping with an abortion, an unprecedented case in Poland, a country with one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Europe.
Justyna Wydrzynska, who provided abortion pills to a pregnant woman, was found ‘guilty of assisting’ the practice of voluntary termination of pregnancy and was given ‘eight months of community service at the rate of 30 hours per month”, wrote on Twitter the organization Abortion Dream Team, of which she is one of the co-founders.
“I don’t feel guilty, I don’t accept this judgment,” Justyna Wydrzynska told reporters as she left court, announcing that she would appeal and continue to help women. “Nothing has changed,” she added.
The reasons for the court decision have not been made public.
“A hole”
“Today’s sentencing represents a new chasm in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland: a setback for which women and girls – and those who defend their rights – are paying a heavy price”, commented Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, in a press release.
“This case sets a dangerous precedent in Poland, where abortion is almost completely banned, and provides chilling insight into the consequences of such restrictive laws,” she added.
Lawyer Anna Bergiel, Justyna Wydrzynska’s lawyer, said the court wanted to send “a message to society that such behaviour, such help, will not be tolerated”.
For an association of ultra-Catholic jurists, “the defendant, as well as the entire environment of activists (for the right to practice) abortion, has been promoting abortion, including pharmacological abortion, for years, flouting the law in Poland”.
“The judgment in the Justyna Wydrzynska case must therefore be considered as an important step towards the real respect of the right to life of unborn children in force in Poland”, insisted Magdalena Majkowska, from Ordo Iuris, in a press release. .
Up to three years in prison
The activist risked up to three years in prison for having “provided assistance” with this abortion and “having put drugs on the market without authorization”, under Polish legislation, one of the strictest in Europe in this area. .
According to Natalia Broniarczyk, an Abortion Dream Team activist, the prosecutor requested a less severe sentence “because we are in an election year”, specifying that the majority of Poles are now in favor of a liberalization of the law on the ‘abortion.
According to a poll carried out at the beginning of March, 83.7% of Poles are in favor of such liberalisation. Only 11.5% of respondents would like to maintain the current legal status.
“This is an absurd and shameful judgement,” Polish MEP Robert Biedron wrote on Twitter: “The Polish state has failed and the fanatics have won another battle.”
In 2020, a woman in her 12th week of pregnancy and wanting to terminate it asked for help from Justyna Wydrzynska, whose Abortion Dream Team she helped to create claims to have made possible 44,000 abortions in 2022, or 107 per day.
Previously, this woman wanted to go to a clinic specializing in abortions in Germany, but her husband prevented her from leaving. While she was waiting at home for a package with the pills, it called the police who confiscated the medicine and opened an investigation. The woman subsequently miscarried.
