Women Across Poland Are Demonstrating for Unrestricted Access to Legal Abortions

On Thursday, women organized street protests in over 20 cities and towns across Poland to oppose the insufficient access to legal and free abortion. They are blaming Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal administration for not delivering on its commitment to ease Poland’s stringent abortion regulations, and they are demonstrating even after the parliament approved two measures on Tuesday intended to simplify abortion laws. The conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, is expected to veto the measures.

Zofia Marcinek from the reproductive rights group Abortion Dream Team in Warsaw stated that passing the draft laws now, a year ahead of the next parliamentary election, amounts to “token gestures” instead of a true commitment to reforming abortion law. She claimed the liberal government understood that the proposed laws wouldn’t survive Nawrocki’s veto and has only attempted to give the appearance of taking action, as it requires women’s backing to succeed in next year’s elections.

Since 1993, legal abortions in Catholic Poland have only been permitted in instances of serious fetal abnormalities, threats to the mother’s health and life, or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest.

Polish women have been advocating for abortion legalization since then, notably through a nationwide series of protests called “Black Protest,” where women donned black and began in 2016.

Instead of being liberalized, Poland’s abortion laws were further restricted, prohibiting abortions of fetuses with congenital defects in 2020 under the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) administration. Regardless of the regulations, abortions are prevalent in Poland, with a vast majority performed by women at home using pills acquired from abroad. Women who have abortions, even through medication, are not held criminally responsible under Polish law. However, individuals assisting them, such as doctors and relatives, might face prosecution.

Abortion continues to be a taboo topic in Poland, which has some of the most stringent abortion regulations in Europe, surpassed only by Malta’s stricter restrictions. Tusk’s pro-European coalition secured victory in the 2023 election partly by pledging to liberalize Poland’s abortion regulations.

However, Tusk stated that in 2024, his administration would struggle to bypass the probable veto from a conservative president. Instead, actions were taken to stop hospitals from denying legal abortions based on religious objections.

According to data from the national health fund, Polish hospitals conducted 573 abortions in the first half of 2026, compared to 452 for the entire year of 2022 before Tusk took office.

However, activists claim that hundreds of thousands of abortions occur each year outside of medical facilities.

Activists coordinating Thursday’s demonstrations assert that the Tusk government has let down Polish women — and that Tusk’s statements regarding improved access to abortion for women during his term have, in fact, made it more difficult for certain women to obtain care.

“The government’s promises act as a type of disinformation,” Marcinek told the AP. “Women getting pregnant hear the prime minister say that everything is ok, that there is access to abortion, and then they end up in the hospital and see that is not the case. So they come to us when it’s very late and very complicated and expensive to help them.”

In 2025, the Abortion Dream Team established an “abortion clinic” opposite the parliament building in Warsaw, allowing women to receive information about their choices or even take their abortion pills alongside supportive activists.

In September, the activists introduced a parcel locker providing abortion pills at the same site, referred to as the “Abortomat.”

The international feminist non-profit Women Help Women operates the dispenser. According to Marcinek, it allows women seeking abortions to obtain the pills the following day instead of waiting for as long as two weeks for delivery to their homes.