Activists opened pop-up abortion clinic outside Polish parliament. Opponents threw acid at it

Donald Tusk's Polish government has not yet pushed through abortion law reform. In the meantime, opposite the parliament building, feminists have opened an abortion 'clinic', where they face harassment and bullying by anti-abortion activists several times a week — with no protection from the Polish authorities.

“What can I tell you?” shrugs Nikola, a bearded Netflix employee from Bulgaria, when I ask him how he perceives the current political situation. “The whole of Europe is heading towards fascism!” 

“I’m constantly angry,” adds his Polish partner Anna, who is looking at sweatshirts on a rack next to the window.

Nikola and Anna met in the Netherlands, where they lived together for several years. Five years ago, they started visiting Poland more often to attend mass pro-choice demonstrations, and then moved to Anna’s native Warsaw. 

“We’ll see how the next parliamentary elections turn out,” Anna muses. “Maybe we’ll have no choice but to go back to the Netherlands. Not that it’s ideal there, but I feel like people care more about each other there, that there’s a stronger authentic Left. The Polish Left is too polite.”

"Is it too big for me?" she asks, turning to the mirror in the pink sweatshirt she chose. We all nod approval as Anna hands it to Emilia, who’s set up a pink iron-on machine. Anna picked a pop art design: a yellow star between parted red lips, pills falling above, and the words: “I help with abortions.”

It is the logo of the abortion 'clinic' AboTak, a safe space where anyone can come for advice and support in the event of an unwanted pregnancy or unprotected sex.

Activists from the Aborcyjny Dream Team organisation opened the clinic on this year’s International Women’s Day on Wiejská Street in Warsaw, opposite the Polish parliament.

They did so a year and a half after the ultra-conservative anti-abortion party Law and Justice (PiS) lost its majority in parliament and a politically-diverse coalition led by Donald Tusk of the centre-right Civic Platform took power.

Tusk returned to the prime minister’s office with grandiose promises summed up in 100 specific programme points for the first 100 days of his government.

One of them was legalising abortion.

Last April, four government bills to relax Poland’s abortion laws were submitted to parliament. The current law allows abortion only in truly extreme situations: incest, rape or if the mother’s life is at risk. Along with Malta, it is considered one of the strictest in Europe.

Two proposals from the Civic Coalition and the New Left coalition proposed legalising abortion on demand up to the twelfth week of pregnancy, while the third proposal from the New Left sought to decriminalise abortion altogether.

Polish women can now terminate their pregnancies with impunity, but those who help them face punishment. A fourth proposal by the Third Way coalition allowed abortion only on the grounds of foetal impairment. This exception was overturned in 2020 by a ruling of the Constitutional Court, which the PiS had successfully brought under their control during their eight years in power.

None of the proposals passed.

'I knew from the beginning that they were lying to us. Even during the election campaign, they knew they wouldn’t get a majority for reforming abortion legislation...And that is exactly why we opened AboTak – to show people that, unlike politicians, we keep our promises,' says Justyna Wydrzyńská, a prominent Polish pro-choice activist

'They could have been heroes'

Marta Lempartová, the former face of pro-choice demonstrations, meets me in the office of the All-Poland Women’s Strike in central Warsaw. As a proud reminder of her beginnings, a photograph on the wall shows the largest protest in October 2020, when around half a million people took to the streets.

Over the years, the former coordinators of the movement have become a team of civil society organisers. Lempartová, however, remains uncompromising.

As Lempartová points out, Tusk’s government has changed its arguments throughout its term in office as to why it has not yet pushed through the relaxation of abortion legislation.

Initially, it blamed the expected veto of outgoing president Andrzej Duda.

“They could have been national heroes. If they had tried to push through what their voters want and fought for the right thing regardless of whether the president would block their efforts, people would have appreciated it. After all,” she notes, “this is an issue that may well cost them the next parliamentary elections.”

As Lempartová emphasises in every interview, according to polls, the majority of Polish society currently supports the relaxation of abortion legislation.

Last August, Tusk admitted that he simply did not have a parliamentary majority to legalise abortion on demand, as his conservative coalition partners from the Polish People’s Party and, to some extent, from the Poland 2050 party, were opposed to legalising abortion.

“Nonsense. The People’s Party has been a junior coalition partner in all governments. They can easily be bought; it would take Tusk 15 minutes to convince them. All he would have to do is threaten them with the loss of lucrative positions or financial resources. They are so corrupt and weak that if elections were held now, they wouldn’t even make it into parliament. And we all know it.”

Lempartová stands by her words with her characteristic fervour. “We have no choice but to take to the streets again for abortion and probably for registered partnerships too.”

A ban on education

“I didn’t expect anything,” says Justyna Wydrzyńská, a prominent Polish pro-choice activist.

“I knew from the beginning that they were lying to us. Even during the election campaign, they knew they wouldn’t get a majority for reforming abortion legislation. So why did they promise it? They're playing political games with us, the rules of which we don’t know, and they've exploited us for political tactics. And that is exactly why we opened AboTak – to show people that, unlike politicians, we keep our promises.”

We sit nonchalantly on the floor in a small room separated by a single door from the main room of the AboTak clinic. Behind us is a light pink armchair and a beanbag of a similar but deeper shade. Several heart-shaped lamps are attached to the wall, and there is also a lava lamp and reading material. Wydrzyńská, dressed in a long flowing dress with lilac eyeshadow, blends in perfectly with the interior. There is also a separate toilet.

This room is nicknamed 'mizolatka' — a combination of the words “isolation” and “misoprostol”, the most common pharmacological abortion drug. Science and the internet mean that the vast majority of Poles who become pregnant unintentionally now undergo abortion at home using pills ordered online through organisations such as Women on Web.

According to the World Health Organisation, pharmacological abortion is safe up to the twelfth week of pregnancy, even without medical supervision.

Several countries, such as the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands, already allow pharmacological abortion to be performed at least partially at home. All it takes is five pills — the first is mifepristone, which causes the foetus to detach from the uterine wall. One to two days later, four misoprostols must be swallowed, which cause uterine contractions and the opening of the cervix.

Approximately eight hours after taking misoprostol, during which time the body expels most of the foetus, women can spend time here in the 'mizolatka'; not every Polish woman has a safe space where she can undergo an abortion undisturbed. What’s more, here they have access to empathetic professionals with years of experience in the abortion underground.

According to unofficial estimates, approximately 100,000 Polish women undergo an abortion each year.

The tightening of abortion legislation in 2020 resulted in mass demonstrations and a society-wide awareness campaign. More people joined self-help abortion networks, and stickers and graffiti appeared in public spaces with the phone numbers of abortion organisations and information on how medical abortion works.

The most active abortion organisation, Aborcyjny Dream Team, was founded in 2016 by Wydrzyńská together with Natalia Broniarczyková and Karolina Więckiewiczová. They were already helping women in Poland who had become pregnant unintentionally before AboTak was founded, either online or by phone.

“In Poland,” Broniarczyková points out, “it is easier to have a pharmaceutical abortion today than in Germany, for example.”

In Germany, abortion is preceded by a consultation with a social worker, followed by a mandatory three-day waiting period.

In Poland, on the other hand, women have the decision and the process in their own hands — without medical supervision and without a record in their medical records. And if necessary, they can take their questions in real time to women who will not judge them.

'We're afraid of legalisation of abortion'

This leads to a paradoxical situation. “We don’t need a law legalising abortion,” explains Wydrzyńská. “In fact, we are afraid of it. The healthcare system is not prepared to provide 100,000 abortions a year."

"What we need is decriminalisation. We don’t want to see the relatives of women who have had abortions being dragged through the courts,” she also said.

In Poland, law enforcement agencies launch random investigations — for example, of a boyfriend who gave his partner money for abortion pills.

As lawyer Karolina Gierdalová pointed out to AFP, criminalising assistance with an abortion “causes a lot of anxiety about where such assistance begins. Can a friend be with me? Can she give me a bottle of hot water?”

Wydrzyńská is the only activist who has been convicted for allegedly assisting with an abortion, for which she was given a sentence of eight months of community service. In 2020, she provided a woman with abortion pills, which the woman’s boyfriend discovered, and he then reported Wydrzyńská.

Wydrzyńská was convicted under a 1993 law targeting doctors who perform manual abortions, and yet no doctor has ever been convicted of performing an abortion in Poland.

“I only provided the woman in question with a tool that she could use if she wanted to,” says the activist, who insists on her innocence. “Moreover, the pills were confiscated by the police, and she did not have an abortion until many weeks later — using a foil cutter.”

In February this year, the appeal court overturned the verdict and returned the case to the court of first instance on suspicion of bias on the part of the judge, who had been nominated to the post by the ultra-conservative former minister of justice Zbigniew Ziobro.

Despite the fact that AboTak provides only information and a safe space for abortions to take place, not pills, Wydrzyńská and Broniarczyková are still being repeatedly questioned by the police.

When Tusk announced that he did not have a parliamentary majority to push through abortion reform, he promised that he would at least do everything in his power to end the persecution of people helping with abortions.

According to Broniarczyková, decriminalising abortion would also help to test whether the Polish medical community really refuses to perform abortions primarily out of fear of punishment. “A similar situation prevails now in Mexico, where abortion was recently decriminalised, not legalised — and doctors have started to perform abortions themselves.”

In contrast to decriminalisation, every abortion law contains a list of restrictive conditions that determine up to which week of pregnancy, how often and under what medical supervision an abortion can be performed.

“Given the conservative composition of the Polish parliament, I'm terrified that abortion will only be allowed under strict conditions and will consequently become less accessible than it is today. In the end, it is our lives and health that are at stake. There is no scientific or medical reason why abortion should be regulated by law, let alone the criminal code,” Broniarczyková argues. “It is nothing more than control over women.”

People can buy items to support AboTak: a pink mug with the inscription 'You will never walk alone' or panties inscribed with 'I fuck to come, not to get pregnant' are apparently the best-sellers

A pastel-coloured desire to live a normal life

Six women have had abortions at the clinic so far. “We thought there would be more interest in this service,” admits Wydrzyńská. “Nevertheless, I think we do need more places like this — even if they are only open twice a week. They have an important symbolic value. Just look at the type of messages, ideas and images that were associated with abortion until recently — exclusively negative ones. We want to associate abortion with positive messages about relief and the desire to live a normal life,” she explains.

Meanwhile, the main room at AboTak is bustling with activity, as it is every day.

In addition to Anna and Nikola, who came with a bag of sugared marmalade croissants, Ola has also rushed in today. The petite girl in a dark summer shirt with a palm leaf pattern has brought with her an Easter cake thickly dusted with powdered sugar, nicknamed 'Babka' [grandmother]. In central Poland, where she comes from, babka contains a surprising ingredient — mayonnaise, which makes it moister.

Ola’s babka had risen quite a bit, and the dome on top had cracked, making it look like a vulva. “I didn’t plan it, but I knew I would bring it here while I was baking it – Babka must have known,” she laughs at the play on words, while the women of AboTak pose playfully with their tongues sticking out.

One in three-to-four women will have an abortion at least once in their lives. Ola is one of them.

“I got pregnant after being raped. Fortunately, I was living in England at the time. I found out in the 12th week, but I didn’t get an abortion until the 20th week. If I had been in Poland at the time, I might have an eight-year-old child today,” she says.

In Poland, a woman who has been raped can only have an abortion up to the twelfth week, and the rape must be proven by a prosecutor.

A punk with a beautiful, pierced boyish face, who recognises Ola as a feminist TikTok influencer, also comes to thank the AboTak team for their work. He buys a canvas bag with a capybara print and the word “abo” on it, into which Emilia puts a supply of condoms. She hugs everyone.

Every day, the table holds a vase of fresh flowers — today, red tulips — and a plate of sweet snacks for everyone: gestures of support that people bring to AboTak every day.

The room is dominated by a red satin couch in the shape of sensual lips, and a curtain of the same colour divides the room into a public area and a backstage area.

The coat rack and shelves are overflowing with items in mostly pastel shades with pro-choice and feminist slogans, which people can buy to support AboTak: a pink mug with the inscription “You will never walk alone” or panties inscribed with “I fuck to come, not to get pregnant”. These are apparently the bestsellers — although most customers ask for them in whispers. Stickers and posters in the room are full of messages about sisterhood, female autonomy and the almost magical ease and accessibility of pharmacological abortion.

Broniarczyková, who usually comes to AboTak with her two French bulldogs, glances nervously out the window from time to time. “Who’s that cameraman?” she asks, pointing to a man outside. “Is he one of us?”

Bullying with noise

I fully understand the reason for her suspicious glance a week later. Cartoonist Carrot B. is presenting her latest comic, Wyjście (Exit), about a Polish woman who travels to the Netherlands to have an abortion. Suddenly, in front of the AboTak shop window, a group of people unfurl posters with photographs of foetuses.

To make matters worse, a dangerously loud noise begins to bellow from huge speakers: a high-pitched sound, reminiscent of an ambulance siren, and the sound of a baby crying inconsolably. One of the people present listens intently. “They added a new sound today, didn’t they?” Some of the protesters blow their plastic vuvuzelas obsessively.

“This is the most bizarre book presentation I’ve ever seen”, says the illustrator, trying to lighten the tense atmosphere with laughter, but she is clearly uncomfortable. 

“I’ll have to take an Uber home again,” sighs Broniarczyková, trying to silence her nervousness by eating one peanut after another. “They’ve robbed me of everything, even the joy of riding my bike.”

Anti-abortion protesters gather outside the clinic about three times a week. Their noisy protests are sometimes accompanied by cries of “Murder of Innocents.”

At other times, they play excerpts from a podcast in which Broniarczyková talks about her experience with abortion and how, despite her conviction that she made the right decision, she sometimes thinks about how old her child would be today. Twice already, the protestors have splashed the clinic’s doorstep with pungent smelling butyric acid. 

The anti-abortion protesters have officially registered their demonstration in front of the clinic every day between 8 AM and 8 PM.

Activists and women who want to come to AboTak for advice or to have an abortion never know whether they will have to fight their way through a hateful, rowdy crowd that has no qualms about putting vuvuzelas to their ears.

A few days ago, a Ukrainian refugee who became pregnant after being raped and was unable to order pills online reportedly had to pass through a particularly aggressive protest.

AboTak is, moreover, in a residential area, and the regular harassment with noise disturbs the lives of local residents. Neighbours told the activists that they even had to hospitalise a six-year-old autistic girl after she started self-harming because of the noise. That made the activists consider closing the clinic. 

“It’s not that we’re afraid of them,” Wydrzyńská explains. “But we don’t want our neighbours to suffer because of our space.

However, when we told one of them, she replied: “You can’t do that. This isn’t about you. This is about them.” So we decided to give the clinic another chance. And we started to take a more aggressive approach. Now we record the faces of the protestors on our phones and post on the internet what they do to us.”

The activists agree, however, that responding to the protests is primarily the responsibility of the city, whose mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, a presidential candidate from Tusk’s Civic Platform, lost in the second round of the presidential elections on 1 June against conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki.

On the initiative of leftwing senator Magdalena Biajetová, the clinic is now guarded by police on a daily basis, so acid is no longer being thrown at it. However, the police refuse to break up demonstrations that disrupt public order, citing freedom of assembly, which they say cannot be denied to anyone on the grounds of decibel levels.

According to the Polish constitution, however, the police can, of course, disperse a gathering if it threatens the health, property or safety of the population, which is undoubtedly the case with demonstrations that result in a six-year-old girl being injured.

The police’s inaction seems particularly inappropriate in view of their response to the peaceful May Day demonstration by the Plakaciary group, whose members posted pro-abortion slogans near the parliament in response to the attacks with butyric acid. As soon as they stepped onto the lawn in front of the metal fence on which they wanted to post the slogans, they were surrounded by about 20 police officers equipped with mini cameras.

Although the police eventually allowed the activists to complete their action, all those present will be summoned for police questioning because they allegedly committed a criminal offence. 

“Where were you when acid was thrown at the clinic?” Julia Kamińska, a member of the Plakaciary group and a well-known actress, asked the police. “Do you know that women are being doused with acid all over the world to intimidate them? What can we do to feel safe in our own city?”

“Stay at home, eat pizza, watch Netflix and don’t cause any trouble,” replied the police officer.

Another member of the group, a vigorous blonde, Janka, adds approvingly: “That was exactly our purpose: to point out that they don’t care about acid attacks on abortion clinics, but they'll send 20 police to deal with posters supporting human rights.” To stop them from continuing their alleged criminal activity, the police confiscated the paintbrushes and plastic bucket of liquid glue from the activists.

Despite two hours of commotion, illustrator Carrot B. finished her book presentation. Nonetheless, we left the clinic that day through the back door, feeling dejected. Broniarczyková has a frozen expression on her face, a mixture of anger, exhaustion and sadness. I ask her if she is okay. 

“Yes and no,” she replies. “How could everyone have left us in the lurch? I have helped so many important women in Poland with abortions. I could compile a really long list.”

“I need a drink” commands Zuza, an artist and AboTak worker with dreadlocks tied in an elegant bun under a peach-coloured scarf, before striding forward angrily. “How can anyone claim that Trzaskowski supports abortion? It’s his inaction that’s allowing all this to happen. And when we point this out, we’re accused of helping the fascists win. As if we have to celebrate anyone who isn’t openly fascist.”

“Exactly,” Joanna, a bespectacled volunteer and anti-fascist who has been involved in the fight for abortion rights since she was 15, continues in a more conciliatory tone. “Lately, for the first time in my life, I feel like there’s nothing left to lose. It’s as if the fascists have already won, in a way.”

And yet, in the end, we spend a touchingly beautiful evening together. We talk about activism, family traumas, and socialisation into accepting chronic feelings of inadequacy and guilt. 

“I feel so incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to work with such amazing people as you” repeats Emilia, AboTak’s manager. And every time someone lifts a glass that night, the whole room shouts: “To sisterhood!”

This article was written as part of PULSE, a European initiative to support cross-border journalistic cooperation. Michał Kokot from Gazeta Wyborcza contributed to the preparation of the text. Translated by Anton Baer (Voxeurop)

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