The rebels Mathilde Panot and Manon Aubry bring abortion pills to Poland
Poland has a near-total ban on abortion. Assisting an abortion is punishable by prison time, but there are no laws against women who perform their own abortions using pills ordered online.
By Le Parisien with AFPMP Mathilde Panot (LFI) and MEP Manon Aubry (LFI) brought abortion and morning-after pills to Poland on Tuesday to support activists in this Catholic country, whose laws on termination of pregnancy are among the strictest in Europe . These representatives of the La France Insoumise party handed over around 300 pills to activists in Warsaw and promised to send more in the future.
Poland has a near-total ban on abortion. Assisting an abortion is punishable by prison time, but there are no laws against women who perform their own abortions using pills ordered online.
"We are bringing something to help women who want to terminate their pregnancies because, whatever the situation, women's bodies belong neither to the state nor to the Church, but to women and to them alone," declared Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI parliamentary party. "We will continue to send pills," she said while visiting Poland's first abortion center, located directly across from the parliament. The parliamentarians traveled to Poland in a van.
The Abortion Dream Team association established the center last month to lobby lawmakers and provide a space where women considering terminating their pregnancies can get help doing so. Activist Justyna Wydrzynska said the French visit represents "support we don't get from politicians in Poland."
Polish women can only have a hospital abortion if the pregnancy is the result of sexual assault or incest, or if it poses a direct threat to the mother's life or health. Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition has pledged to relax these laws , but has yet to secure parliamentary support to push through the changes.
According to official figures, just under 900 abortions were performed in hospitals last year in this country of 38 million people. But tens of thousands of women each year end their pregnancies at home —using pills—or abroad, according to women's rights groups.
Decades ago, "when abortion was not legal in France, French women came to Poland to have abortions," recalled Manon Aubry, leader of the LFI MEPs in the European Parliament. "Today, we are taking our solidarity the other way," she said.
Le Parisien
