Image: The founders of a Warsaw clinic cut a ribbon to open the centre where people can consult on termination options, including medical abortion, in Warsaw, Poland on 7 March 2025. Photo: BIRN
In a challenge to Poland’s government, which has failed to legalise abortion despite its election promises (because they do not have the votes), activists have opened a clinic in the centre of Warsaw where women can receive support when taking abortion pills.
“We want every person coming here to have the feeling they are surrounded by trust and care, that this is a safe place. We have the knowledge, we have the experience, we really can help with abortions,” said Justyna Wydrzynska, one of the founders of the Warsaw clinic that opened on Friday as a place where women can come to have a medical abortion or consult on other termination options.
“Group abortions will take place here,” Wydrzynska told journalists during a press conference on 7 March. “There is no other way to get rid of the stigma, the shame. To show women they are not alone and that this experience can be a positive one.”
The centre is Poland’s first clinic where women can take abortion pills, currently the main practice for uncomplicated first-trimester cases, in “home-like” conditions, but with the support of experienced activists. Women have access to bathrooms, hygiene products and “care packages” including hot-water bottles for pain or tea. Activists argue this is the way to bring into the open a practice commonly happening in Polish homes despite the legal ban. The group say on their website that they assist in 44,000 abortions annually.
The clinic is at Number 9 Wiejska Street, directly opposite the Polish parliament building.
“We don’t have time to wait any more until they all agree,” said Natalia Broniarczyk, referring to the three members in Tusk’s governing coalition, not all of whom favour abortion on demand. “On August 31, 2024, Donald Tusk said it’s unlikely the abortion law will be changed in the current parliamentary term. But he also promised they won’t prosecute women, nor those who help them. So, we said: ‘let’s check – this is a test of their support’….When we saw this location was available, we read it as a sign to come out of hiding and show politicians, from as close as possible, that when one wants to do abortions, it’s possible,” Broniarczyk told the media at the opening of the clinic.
While the Polish authorities had not reacted by the time of publishing this article, quicker to respond were some of Poland’s conservative activists. On 8 March, when the clinic officially opened to the public, a number of protestors blocked the sidewalk in front of the entrance, holding huge banners with graphic images of fetuses, playing a recording of babies crying, and chanting “murderers” at the feminist activists inside.
However, the police guarded the entrance to the clinic and asked the protesters to immediately remove red paint that they had poured on the sidewalk.
SOURCE: Balkan Insight, by Claudia Ciobanu, 10 March 2025