A well-known women’s rights activist in Poland was sentenced to community service on Tuesday for providing abortion pills to a victim of domestic violence. The unique prosecution and punishment of Justyna Wydrzynska demonstrate the risks faced by unwanted pregnant women and especially their helpers in Poland. Partly due to the great influence of the Catholic Church, the country has one of the strictest abortion laws in the European Union.
Wydrzynska, who admitted sending the pills, did not receive the feared maximum three years in prison. A judge in Warsaw orders her to perform 30 hours of community service per month for eight months, and she is given a criminal record. “The process against me is harassment of all other women, and men, who help in legal and less legal ways: don’t you dare,” she said earlier in NRC about the case against her. According to Polish media, she has announced that she will appeal.
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According to Wydrzynska, the judge in her case was not independent because he was appointed since the government coalition is “reforming” the judiciary. Monday a judge in Poznan acquitted a group of 32 demonstrators who protested in the local cathedral after the tightening of the abortion ban. They could have been jailed for up to two years for “malicious intervention of religious act.” But according to the judge, they were not malicious, but they stood up for “violated women’s rights”.
Domestic violence
Several Polish women have died in recent years due to lack of medical intervention when their pregnancy became life-threatening. Since the abortion of disabled and non-viable fetuses was also banned in 2020, doctors are also extremely reluctant to help women in situations where they are still entitled to it: if they themselves are in danger or after a rape.
The process against me is harassment of all other women, and men, who help in legal and less legal ways
Justyna Wydrzynska women’s rights activist
Wydrzynska has been active for many years in Polish and international organizations that help women order pills online to terminate their pregnancy or travel to other European countries for an abortion. The use of abortion pills is not punishable, but the immediate delivery of them is. In February 2020, Wydrzynska did so directly, because the woman who enlisted her help was in an emergency situation of domestic violence and an almost twelve-week-old pregnancy. “I didn’t want her to risk her own life by doing something dangerous, when such a simple and safe solution is available,” Wydrzynska said at the last hearing. But the woman’s husband intercepted the pills and put the police on the trail to Wydrzynska.
Anonymous acknowledgment
In an at times emotional process, in which Wydrzynska told how she too was once stuck in an abusive relationship, the (anonymous) woman she had helped thanked her. “When people who had a moral and some legal obligation to help me failed to help me, you gave me a helping hand.” The woman was never able to take the pills and subsequently lost her child to a miscarriage.
International human rights organizations speak expressed their horror at the verdict. The organization Ordo Juris, which is affiliated with the conservative-nationalist government celebrate it right. This ultra-Catholic lobby club was allowed by the judge to act as the representative of the unborn child in the trial.
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