The Polish Court of Appeal announced on 30 January 2025 that a verdict in the appeal hearing of Justyna Wydrzyńska, convicted in 2023 for helping a woman in an abusive relationship to access abortion pills that she did not use, was handed down today, 13 February.
Monica Costa Riba, Amnesty International’s Women’s Rights Senior Campaigner, wrote:
“Justyna Wydrzyńska should never have been prosecuted let alone convicted, and no one should be criminalized for helping pregnant people access essential health care. Her prosecution exposed the lengths that the Polish authorities will go to in order to shut down legitimate activism and curtail the ability of women and girls to exercise their reproductive rights. Her unjust conviction must be overturned and the dangerous precedent it sets, reversed. Justyna is thought to be the first human rights activist in Europe to be prosecuted for providing abortion pills. She must be the last.”
Background
In 2020 Justyna Wydrzyńska – a doula and one of the founders of the Abortion Dream Team – supported a pregnant woman who had been suffering from domestic violence, to access abortion pills. The woman did not use the pills, however, but obtained an abortion elsewhere.
Even so, on 22 November 2021, Justyna was charged with “helping with an abortion” and “possession of medicines without authorization for the purpose of introducing them into the market”. In March 2023, she was convicted of abetting an abortion and was sentenced to eight months of community service. She did not do the community service because the case went to appeal.
Abortion is only legal in Poland when the health or life of the pregnant woman is at risk or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Managing your own abortion or possession of abortion pills for a self-managed abortion are not crimes under Polish law, but any person or doctor who helps someone else with an abortion outside the two permitted legal grounds may face up to three years in prison.
The case was finally heard in the appeal court on 30 January 2025. The judge “set aside” the original verdict issued two years ago and ruled that the case had to be “reviewed”. Good news?? No, on the contrary. It must now go back and be heard all over again from the beginning. A total waste of time and resources; a way of punishing someone repeatedly by incompetent judges who look down on women. The issues of judicial incompetence, cowardice and bias shown all down the line in this case beggar belief.
Read the details in the Oko Press report cited below. Thanks to Mara Clarke for sharing crucial information and analysis.
SOURCES: Magdalena Chrzczonowicz, Oko Press, 13 February 2025 ; Monica Costa Riba, Amnesty International, 30 January 2025.