Polish activists open first abortion pill locker

WARSAW, Poland (AFP) — Polish activists have opened the country’s first-ever abortion locker, allowing women to access pregnancy-terminating pills anonymously and immediately in the country with some of Europe’s strictest abortion laws, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer confirmed Wednesday.

The small, colorfully painted locker, which activists call an “abortomat,” consists of 22 compartments containing envelopes with medications allowing them to carry out medical abortions.

“It’s a feminist intervention meant to show just how upside down things are,” Kinga Jelinska, director of the Women Help Women Foundation and co-founder of the Abortion Dream Team, told AFP.

“We always think about how to make abortion care easier, more accessible, friendlier, more people centered,” she added.

“It’s simply logical and makes sense.”

The facility’s location — across the street from the Polish parliament, which has failed to follow through on its pledges to relax the country’s stringent abortion laws — is purposefully symbolic.

It was here that activists decided to open an abortion center just over a year ago.

Rather than a typical medical clinic, it provides women with access to resources, including pills, and a space to be able to seek support or carry out the pharmacological abortion.

Abortion in Poland is legal only in two circumstances: When the pregnancy resulted from a criminal act — such as rape or incest — or if it threatens the mother’s life or health.

A 2020 decision by the Constitutional Tribunal, ruled that severe fetal abnormalities were not legal grounds for abortion.

Prior to this ruling, 98 percent of legal abortions in Poland were performed for this reason.

The new restrictions set off a torrent of protests throughout the country, which became the largest mass demonstrations in Poland since the 1989 anti-communist movement.

In the first half of 2025, only 846 legal abortions took place in Poland, according to data from the National Health Fund and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.