Nearly half of Polish women voted for Karol Nawrocki, dashing hopes for abortion reform

Activists are disillusioned by the new president’s plan to stop liberalisation.

Aleksandra Krzysztoszek, Euractiv Poland 
Jun 10, 2025 

The election of conservative firebrand Karol Nawrocki as Poland's president is slamming the brakes on plans to legislate for legal abortion, leaving reproductive rights activists disillusioned and looking abroad once more.

Throughout the election campaign, Nawrocki left little doubt about his stance on abortion, pledging not to sign a proposed law by Donald Tusk's centrist coalition that would restore the so-called abortion compromise which would legalise abortion in cases of rape, severe fetal abnormalities, or threat to the mother’s life.

Continued:  https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/nearly-half-of-polish-women-voted-for-karol-nawrocki-dashing-hopes-for-abortion-reform/


Polish election: Tusk party urged to show it is not ‘deceiving women’ on abortion

Five years after near-total ban on abortion, campaigners say Sunday’s elections will be critical to see if promised change happens

Ashifa Kassam, European community affairs correspondent
Thu 15 May 2025

Poland’s presidential elections are a “historic, groundbreaking” chance for Donald Tusk’s centrist party to show it was not trying to “deceive women” when it promised to change some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, campaigners have said.

Voters across Poland will head to the polls on Sunday in the first round of the elections to replace Andrzej Duda, the current president who is aligned with the former rightwing government and has veto power over legislation.

Polls have suggested the frontrunner is Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, whose centrist Civic Coalition led by the prime minister, Donald Tusk, has promised to relax abortion laws. But in recent weeks his lead has narrowed and support has climbed for Karol Nawrocki of the populist, anti-abortion Law and Justice (PiS) party, suggesting the two could be pitted against each other in a runoff vote on 1 June.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/15/poland-elections-tusk-centrists-abortion-laws-campaign-europe


French progressives bring abortion pills to Poland

Agence France-Presse
April 30, 2025

French hard-left politicians visited Poland on Tuesday to bring abortion and morning-after pills, in a show of support for activists, to the Catholic country whose termination laws are among Europe’s most stringent.

Representatives from the France Unbowed (LFI) party delivered around 300 pills to activists in Warsaw, and vowed to send more in the future.

Continued: https://globalnation.inquirer.net/275209/french-hard-left-bring-abortion-pills-to-poland


Abortion Dream Team review – dynamic study of activists resisting Poland’s near-total ban

Karolina Domagalska’s film follows the tireless work of an activist group founded to battle the country’s legislation against reproductive rights

Phuong Le
Mon 14 Apr 2025

Under Poland’s near-total abortion ban, a group of courageous activists step up for women’s autonomy. Deploying a fly-on-the-wall approach, Karolina Domagalska’s dynamic film closely follows the tireless efforts of Abortion Dream Team (ADT), an advocacy group founded in 2016. Forming a staunch resistance to oppressive legislation, they provide medical consultancy and assistance to tens of thousands of women who can no longer access abortion services legally.

The hotline never stops ringing. Abandoned by the healthcare system, women from all over Poland reach out to the ADT volunteers, who guide them through these moments of uncertainty and confusion with extraordinary care. In addition to abortion pills and emergency contraceptives, the group also provides logistics support to those who need to travel to other countries for critical procedures. Every day comes not only with this flood of cries for help, but also an onslaught of threats and abuse from anti-abortion supporters. In one harrowing scene, the activists confront a group of policemen about a moving bus plastered with the faces of ADT associates, branding them as so-called murderers. The law, however, is not on their side. Justyna, one of their core members, was put on trial and convicted for distributing abortion pills.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/apr/14/abortion-dream-team-review-dynamic-study-of-polish-activists


Polish documentary on abortion rights now available globally

April 8, 2025

Since April 8, the documentary You Are Not Alone, directed by Karolina Lucyna Domagalska, has been available to stream on Prime Video via the Viaplay Films & Series channel.

The film offers a powerful look at a pivotal moment in Poland’s recent social and political history - the fight for reproductive rights under one of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws.

Continued: https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7789/Artykul/3507840,polish-documentary-on-abortion-rights-activists-now-streaming-globally


Activists Open Abortion Clinic Opposite Polish Parliament

Claudia Ciobanu, Warsaw, BIRN
March 10, 2025

In a challenge to Poland’s government, which has failed to legalise abortion despite its election promises, 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 a Warsaw clinic that opened on Friday as a place where women can come to perform a medical abortion or consult on other termination options.

Continued: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/03/10/activists-open-abortion-clinic-opposite-polish-parliament/


Across from parliament, Poland’s first abortion centre opens

Bernard OSSER
Mar 7, 2025

As Poland's first abortion centre opened on Friday the choice of location was nothing short of symbolic: just opposite the parliament that failed to follow through on its pledges to relax the country's stringent abortion laws.

Poland has a near-total ban on abortion but in an act of defiance, the activists decided to put pressure on lawmakers by launching a space near the chamber where women considering terminating their pregnancy can get help to do so.

"This is a historic moment in the 32-year history of democratic Poland, because no one had ever managed to do it before," the centre's coordinator Anna Pieta said, her voice shaking. 

Continued: https://www.wfxg.com/news/across-from-parliament-polands-first-abortion-centre-opens/article_8ee7ea64-3b52-53a7-a4ec-ae6aa0f7e749.html


‘There’s no other solution’: Polish abortion centre opens in challenge to strict laws

Frustrated by government’s failure to ease rules, an NGO is opening a centre a stone’s throw from parliament in Warsaw

Ashifa Kassam
Fri 7 Mar 2025

They poured on to streets across Poland in their hundreds of thousands, carrying placards reading “The revolution has a uterus” and “My body, my choice”. In late 2023 they helped vote in a prime minister who promised a swift overhaul of the country’s draconian abortion laws.

Now, after more than a year of stalled promises, Polish abortion campaigners are taking matters into their own hands, setting up a pregnancy termination centre on one of the country’s corridors of power.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/07/polish-abortion-centre-opens-strict-laws-warsaw


Polish court orders retrial in hot-button abortion case

Warsaw (AFP) – A Polish court on Thursday ordered a retrial in the case of an activist found guilty of aiding a woman to terminate her pregnancy, in a symbolic step for Poland's abortion rights movement.

Feb 13, 2025

Justyna Wydrzynska was sentenced to community service in 2023 in the first such case concerning an activist in the EU country, which has a near-total abortion ban and outlaws abortion assistance.

…But an appeals court on Thursday overturned "the contested judgment in its entirety", judge Rafal Kaniok said, citing doubts over the independence of the presiding judge who delivered the sentence.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250213-polish-court-orders-retrial-in-hot-button-abortion-case


Abortion activists deliver invoice to Polish government: you owe us €11.5m

Saturday, April 13, 2024
Women Help Women

Abortion Without Borders has spent more than €11.5m (PLN 49,104,011) in time and money to provide abortion access for Polish residents, without help from the government.

Activists from Abortion Without Borders brought the ‘Polish abortion debt’ to the Sejm (Polish parliament) on Thursday (11 April), presenting an invoice to the government for the costs of time and financial assistance to provide abortion access for Polish residents.

Continued: https://womenhelp.org/en/page/1584/abortion-activists-deliver-invoice-to-polish-government-you-owe-us