This content was published on April 8th, 2022 – 1:20 pm April 8th, 2022 – 1:20 pm
Kraków (Poland), 8 April (EFE).- The first trial in Poland in application of the new and controversial abortion legislation started today in Warsaw against a woman who helped another to terminate her pregnancy and for which the accused will be convicted could face up to three years imprisonment.
Activist Justyna Wydrzyńska of the civil rights organization Abortion Dream Team (ADT) faces trial for giving abortion pills to a woman who was 12 weeks pregnant.
This is the first trial following the tightening of abortion laws introduced by the ultra-conservative Polish government in January 2021.
According to Wydrzyńska, between February and March 2020, she contacted a woman, whose name has not been released, asking for help in terminating her pregnancy after unsuccessfully contacting another similar association.
Previously, the pregnant woman had attempted to travel to Germany to have the procedure, but her husband threatened to report her and prevent her from seeing their other child, a vengeance he carried out when he took 10 misoprostol discovered pills provided by Wydrzyńska.
Authorities found information and medicines in the activist’s home, prompting the ultra-Catholic association Ordo Iuris to promote the process and help draft the bill.
Wydrzyńska is accused of being a “passive party” and of illegal drug trafficking.
Hundreds of people attended the room where the trial is being held, in a case that has mobilized opponents of the near-total ban on abortion in Poland, whose law is one of the most restrictive in Europe.
Despite protests from the defense, the judge acknowledged the presence of a member of the Ordo Iuris, Jakub Sloniowski, as a “representative of a social organization”.
Since Poland’s Constitutional Court criminalized abortion even when the fetus is severely and irreversibly deteriorating, at least two women have died in situations where doctors were allegedly forced to put the life of the fetus before that of the mother. Mother.
In January, a mother in Chestochowa (south) died of blood poisoning after harboring a dead fetus for a week until medical team assured there was “no chance” of saving her life. A few months earlier, another 30-year-old woman died under similar circumstances.
Polish President Andrzej Duda complained in a statement that only “the death of the mother” had been discussed and that “unfortunately it was not mentioned that a child also died”.
The Abortion Without Borders association, which supports Polish women who want an abortion, helps about a hundred women every day and has so far helped 34,000 Poles who have decided to have an abortion, of which 1,544 were in the second trimester of pregnancy.
In addition, more than a thousand Polish women have filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights to allow abortions in Poland, an initiative supported by more than 200,000 signatures.
When the Polish President ratified the restrictive abortion reform with his signature, there were weeks of massive protests across Poland, despite the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.
Wydrzyńska explained in her testimonies before the trial that she herself was in a situation where she was pushed to have an abortion in the past and that out of “empathy” she decided to take a risk when someone asked her for help.
The defendant also stated that the woman she asked for help was “a victim of an abusive family relationship” because the email, phone, internet browsing history and all communications were controlled by her husband. EFE
mag/gc/fpa
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