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Activist Justyna Wydrzyńska, from the civil rights organization Abortion Dream Team, must answer in court in a case involving her for helping another woman have an abortion after providing her with Misoprostol pills. She faces charges that can lead to three years in prison. Since the law was enacted, two pregnant women have lost their lives due to difficulties in their pregnancy.
This Friday, April 8, in Warsaw, the first trial began on Polish soil after the controversial law that restricts abortion in any circumstance came into force. On the bench sat Justyna Wydrzynska, an activist who helped another woman stop her twelfth-week pregnancy and faces a possible three-year prison sentence.
A member of the civil rights organization Abortion Dream Team (ADT), he is charged with having provided abortion pills to the pregnant woman. It is the first process that has been carried out since the tightening of the anti-abortion law by the ultra-conservative government of Poland was enacted in January 2021.
The defendant explained that the woman – her name was not publicly revealed – looked for her between February and March 2020 to ask her for help to stop the pregnancy.
In the first instance, the pregnant woman had gone to another entity, but had no positive response. She even tried to move to Germany to get her intervention, but her husband prevented it by threatening to file a complaint and deny her another child.
Wydrzynska was charged as a “passive party” and for illegally trading medicines. After searching her home, they found information and medication.
Justyna Wydrzyńska, a human rights defender, faces up to three years in prison for supporting a pregnant woman who needed a safe abortion in Poland.
Hear in her own words how she feels as her trial begins #likejustyna https://t.co/x3XMZ3VYnh
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) April 8, 2022
This case went deep in the civil groups that are in favor of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy and hundreds of people attended the room where the trial takes place. Since the last update, Poland has an anti-abortion law that is one of the most restrictive on the European continent.
Before the trial, the defendant said that she acted “out of empathy” because she herself had gone through a similar process where she had to have an abortion. In addition, she charged that the woman she helped “is the victim of a violent family relationship”, where her husband oppresses her and keeps her incommunicado.
The Polish landscape with the new law
Since the Polish Constitutional Court extended the criminalization of abortion even to situations where the fetus is seriously and irreversibly compromised or endangers the life of the pregnant woman, two women have died due to situations where doctors could not intervene because they had to take precedence. the life of the fetus over the mother.
In January, a mother died of sepsis in the south of the country after carrying a dead fetus for a week until there was no doubt there was a chance of saving her life. Months ago, another woman died in identical circumstances.
In this context, the Abortion Without Borders association, which assists Polish women who intend to have an abortion, registers assistance to a hundred women per day and has already contributed, according to its records, to 34,000.
In the period where the legislation is in force, protests are eventually generated by feminist and related groups -even in times of pandemic- and more than a thousand women signed a lawsuit before the European Court of Human Rights to allow pregnancy interruptions in Poland.
with EFE
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