A court in Poland on Tuesday found a women’s rights activist guilty of aiding an abortion by providing pills, the first conviction of its type in the country and Europe, highlighting the growing risks for women in a nation with the strictest anti-abortion law on the continent.
The activist, Justyna Wydrzynska, a founder of the Abortion Dream Team, an organization that provides information about how to safely terminate pregnancies, was sentenced to eight months of community service, but vowed to continue her work.
“I don’t feel guilty at all,” Ms. Wydrzynska said on Tuesday, surrounded by scores of people who had stood outside the court building in Warsaw for hours in the rain to show their support. “I don’t accept this verdict. I will continue picking up the phone calls.”
Ms. Wydrzynska said she would appeal the verdict. The woman she helped never used the abortion pills and had a miscarriage, according to Ms. Wydrzynska.
The prosecutor had asked for 10 months of community service, saying that “her behavior shows, even manifests, that she would do it again without hesitation.”
Ms. Wydrzynska had acted, the prosecutor said, “with direct intent,” adding, “The degree of the social harmfulness should be assessed as significant, taking into account the violated good — life in the prenatal period.”
The case in Poland offered a glimpse of the implications of a near-total abortion ban, and activists in the United States were closely watching the verdict. In the 13 American states that have outlawed abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, supplying medication to end pregnancies is governed by a patchwork of laws.
Last week in Texas, which has banned abortions at all stages of pregnancy except in life-threatening medical emergencies, a man filed a lawsuit against three women who he said had helped his ex-wife obtain abortion pills.
In Poland, where abortion had been legal for decades under Communist rule, performing the procedure was outlawed in 1993 under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, leaving exceptions for fetal abnormalities, rape, incest and when a woman’s health or life is at risk.
Despite the exceptions, in practice, the law constitutes a near total ban because rape victims must obtain a special certificate from a prosecutor and many doctors fear breaching the law because of what many view as its ambiguous phrasing.
And though a woman cannot be prosecuted for getting an abortion or obtaining abortion pills under the law, helping someone to terminate a pregnancy is illegal. This means that the provider, not the woman, faces legal consequences, with a potential penalty of up to three years in prison.
The law was tightened further in 2021, scrapping the exception for fetal abnormalities, despite the largest protests in Poland’s post-Communist history. Since the ban was tightened, at least three women have died in Poland after doctors refused an abortion or delayed the procedure.
The legislation had repeatedly failed to pass in the Polish Parliament but, in a trajectory that resembles the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Poland’s top court said that abortions for fetal abnormalities were unconstitutional.
In the ruling, the court’s president, Julia Przylebska, said that allowing abortions in cases of fetal abnormality amounted to “eugenic practices with regard to an unborn child, thus denying it the respect and protection of human dignity.”
Because the Polish Constitution guarantees a right to life, she added, terminating a pregnancy based on the health of the fetus amounted to “a directly forbidden form of discrimination.”
Ms. Wydrzynska, who has been an abortion rights activist in Poland for the past 16 years, said in an interview last summer with The Times that she had always been careful to provide only instructions on buying and using abortion medications, and not to provide the pills themselves.
But in February 2020, she said in the interview, she received a desperate message from a woman identified as Anna who was seeking an abortion. The call from the woman, who, the court heard, was in an abusive relationship, revived Ms. Wydrzynska’s own traumatic memories of a violent relationship and getting an abortion. It prompted her, she said, to do something she had never done before — send the woman a package of pills.
“I sent Anna pills because I found out that she had experienced violence like me,” Ms. Wydrzynska told the court in her closing statement on Tuesday, barely holding back tears.
The woman’s partner read the messages between the two women, the court heard, and reported Ms. Wydrzynska to the police. She was charged with “possession of drugs without authorization in order to place them on the market” and “aiding abortion.” The court in Warsaw found Ms. Wydrzynska guilty of aiding abortion by sending misoprostol pills, an abortion medication, and sentenced her to 30 hours of community service a month for eight months.
Ordo Iuris, a Polish Catholic legal organization and anti-abortion group that was registered as a civil party in the trial, had demanded prison time for Ms. Wydrzynska but had no legal right to do so.
A representative of the group, Magdalena Majkowska, told the court on Tuesday that Ms. Wydrzynska’s conviction should “be regarded as a significant step towards real respect for the right to life of unborn children in Poland.”
Ms. Wydrzynska said the court’s justification for its decision had not been made public.
“I am innocent,” she said. “I say it loudly — the state is to blame. It has failed me, Anna, Iza from Pszczyna, Agnieszka from Częstochowa and millions of women in this country,” she added, referring to the women who died after having been refused abortions.
Rights activists said that Ms. Wydrzynska’s case should never have been brought to court.
Keina Yoshida, a senior legal adviser of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which has offices in New York and other cities around the globe, said: “Her prosecution sets a dangerous precedent for the targeting of human rights defenders in Poland who are working to advance reproductive rights and challenge Poland’s de facto ban on abortion.”
“Criminalizing abortion and prosecuting those providing assistance and support to people in need of health care is wrong. It contravenes international human rights treaties and flies in the face of modern medical practice and World Health Organization guidelines.”