The ISP is publishing a translation to English of a report on the horrific state of abortion rights in Poland—conditions that the Ukrainian refugee crisis has exposed. Megan Clement’s article gives us a glimpse of what a post-Roe future holds for the U.S. The original of this article appeared in French here and is translated to Spanish here.
War has returned to Europe, which means that rape as a weapon of war has also returned to Europe. Unwanted pregnancies from these rapes are happening today, right here in Europe.
The fact that a refugee population of over five million people, most of whom are women, flee primarily to Poland, a country where abortion is almost totally illegal, is just one horrific detail among thousands in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
These people endure unimaginable hardships, but in a sense, they are not so different from the millions of people around the world who need to terminate a pregnancy every day. The reasons why they need an abortion don’t matter, and they shouldn’t. They must obtain an abortion, no matter what. But they have been pushed out of a country where it is legal to terminate a pregnancy until twelve weeks and into one where abortion is prohibited in almost all circumstances and largely impossible, even when technically authorized.
In Poland, abortion is only legal in case of risk to the life or health of the pregnant person, or in case of rape. We know it is out of reach in the first case, because at least two women have died since 2021 while waiting for an abortion that could have saved their lives. In the second, proving that you have been raped to get an abortion is not only traumatic, but also nearly impossible, because it requires a criminal investigation.
Imagine, if you can bear it, that you were raped during a war. You have fled your home, you have been separated from your family, you may have lost loved ones in conflict or from bombing. And to terminate your pregnancy, you must get a certificate from a prosecutor proving what happened, while the person who raped you is not even in the same country.
The war in Ukraine has shone a harsh light on the situation that Polish women experience every day. This is the situation that other female refugees— fleeing from Afghanistan, Syria or Belarus— have already faced in Poland. This is a situation that should not happen anywhere, but is taking place in the EU, which apparently boasts of being a bastion of gender equality and human rights.
And who is taking care of the people in the middle of this horrible spectacle? Not national governments. Not political leaders. In many cases, not even doctors. The people taking care of these ongoing human rights violations are a small group of frazzled but determined feminists, operating on a combination of crowdfunding and adrenaline.
Aborcyjny Dream Team and the Abortion Without Borders network provide people in need of an abortion with advice on how to get one, either by referring them to organizations like Women Help Women or Women On Web that send pills by mail, or by helping to fund travel to other countries where abortion is legal.
They take calls from desperate people, help them get the abortion pills they need, communicate through Google Translate when necessary to let people know that, despite all the efforts of the Polish government, it is possible to get an abortion if you need one in Poland, thanks to them.
Justyna Wydrzyńska, one of the four members of the Aborcyjny Dream Team, told me that the organization has helped 158 Ukrainian women since the beginning of March, in particular helping two of them to leave Poland to have an abortion elsewhere. Over the past year, the organization has helped 34,000 people.
The Ukrainian crisis is just the latest in a series of catastrophes that the Aborcyjny Dream team has had to deal with since its launch in 2019, starting with the pandemic, when border closures and postal delays made access to abortion to Poland even more difficult. Then, in January 2021, demand for its services skyrocketed when a Constitutional Court ban on terminating pregnancy in the case of fetal anomaly went into effect. Later in 2021, police raided Wydrzyńska’s home, confiscating her family’s abortion medicines, computers and phones. She was then charged with “assisting abortion” and faces up to three years in prison if found guilty.
In 2020, a pregnant woman who was suffering from domestic violence and needed an abortion contacted Aborcyjny Dream Team. She told them that she had tried to go to Germany with her infant son to terminate the pregnancy, but her husband threatened that he would charge her with kidnapping if she left the country with the child.
It is not illegal to terminate a pregnancy in Poland with a drug purchased online, but it is illegal to provide this drug to someone. But it was at the height of the pandemic, and it was too late for the woman to wait to receive the pills by mail in time during the 12-week period. So Wydrzyńska sent her the pills she had at home.
“I have also experienced domestic violence and I know what it’s like to live with a violent husband,” Wydrzyńska told me. “When someone begs you to help them, you really have no choice but to do it.”
Before the woman had a chance to take the pills, the police arrived at her house and confiscated them. We must call it what it is. The state is not only complicit, but fully participating in the abuse of a man against his wife.
Wydrzyńska will stand trial on July 14. When I asked Wydrzyńska how it feels to have to work with this court case hanging over her, she simply replied, “That doesn’t stop me.” “Giving information to people and hearing that they have found a solution to their situation is something that really pushes me to do it even more and to work harder and harder,” she said.
Poland and Europe outsource their moral responsibility to four feminist activists who risk prison because they have helped people abandoned to a misogynist system that wants to force them to give birth against their will. Our entire defense against this real-life Gilead (the name of the dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale) consists of Wydrzyńska and her colleagues, and this doesn’t seem to bother us.
I have already written that when geopolitics changes, so do reproductive rights. This is because Europe is indifferent to the rights of women and pregnant people.
We watch with concern asRoe v. Wadein the U.S. balances on the precipice, while the European Parliament elects an anti-abortion president from Malta—a country that trapped its own population on an island with no access to pregnancy terminationduring the 2020 confinement.
Poland is perhaps the most extreme example of abortion restriction in the region, but it is not alone in making life difficult for those in need. Slovakia imposes mandatory waiting periods for abortions, Hungary imposes multiple medical appointments, including an ultrasound, before a procedure can be performed, and Romania significantly reduces access. These are all countries where large numbers of Ukrainian refugees have fled.
No one thought about abortions during Brexit, but after the UK’s exit from the EU, Abortion Without Borders now must spend a lot of time getting people to one of the only countries where late-term abortion is allowed. And now you need a passport to get in, and many of the most disadvantaged people don’t have one, and don’t have time to apply for one.
When I ask Wydrzyńska what she and her colleagues need to keep moving forward during this difficult period, she replies two things: money and solidarity. If our European leaders cannot act in the interests of Ukrainian refugees, or Polish survivors of domestic violence, or millions of people who will need an abortion in their lifetime, then we certainly can.
Assisting abortion may be a crime in Poland, but it is also a heroic way to care for others. There are few greater feminist acts than paying for someone else’s abortion. If you can afford it, think about it.
Or, at the very least, offer your solidarity to the army of feminists who are trying to circumvent misogynistic laws, inadequate provisions, and general indifference to ensure that people who need to terminate a pregnancy can do so.
Courtesy Entre les lignes entre les mots
Megan Clement
Megan Clement is a journalist and editor specializing in gender, human rights, international development and social policy. She also writes about Paris, where she has lived since 2015.
