Abortion-rights activists have launched a functioning locker for distributing abortion pills directly opposite the Polish parliament in Warsaw, creating a deliberately high-profile test of Poland’s restrictive abortion framework and the criminal law that can punish people who assist an unlawful termination.
The device, called an “Abortomat” by its organisers, was unveiled on 29 September inside the Abotak centre at Wiejska 9, opposite the Sejm. It was created by international abortion-access organisation Women Help Women in cooperation with Poland’s Abortion Dream Team. The groups describe it as the first system of its kind in the world, although that claim has not been independently verified. The organisers’ launch announcement sets out the project’s stated purpose and operating model.
The locker contains 22 compartments. According to the organisers, a person first contacts Women Help Women and is then given access to a specific compartment containing a prepared package of abortion medication. Reports on the launch say access is provided through an individual six-digit PIN.
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The organisations stress that the installation is not an art project or symbolic prop but an operating distribution system. Abortion Dream Team says it is intended particularly for people who cannot safely wait several days for medication to arrive by post — including those in controlling relationships or situations the group regards as medically urgent.
Organisers also say users do not have to prove Polish citizenship or residence and that Women Help Women continues to provide online support and postal delivery beyond the Warsaw site. Notes from Poland reported that the organisations say they do not collect personal information from users of the locker.
Why its location matters
The address is part of the message.
Abotak itself opened opposite parliament in March 2025 as a consultation and support centre established by Abortion Dream Team. Its organisers chose the location to put pressure on lawmakers after the governing coalition failed to deliver the abortion-law changes promised by some of its parties before the 2023 election.
The new locker takes that confrontation a step further by placing access to abortion medication metres from the institution responsible for changing the law.
Abortion Dream Team says the location is intentional because parliament is where decisions about abortion law should be made. That is the organisation’s political argument rather than a statement about the legal status of the device.
What Polish law currently allows
Polish law permits an abortion where a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life or health, or where there are justified grounds to believe it resulted from a criminal offence such as rape or incest. The Health Ministry’s current guidance confirms those two statutory grounds.
Outside those circumstances, the criminal-law provisions remain important.
Under Article 152 §2 of the Criminal Code, a person who assists a pregnant woman in terminating a pregnancy in violation of the law, or encourages her to do so, can face up to three years in prison. The pregnant woman herself is not criminally liable under that provision for ending her own pregnancy. The provision appears in the current Criminal Code text published in Poland’s legal database.
That creates the central legal question surrounding the Warsaw locker.
The activists argue that collecting medication from an automated compartment changes the legal relationship between the recipient and the people operating the service. Justyna Wydrzyńska of Abortion Dream Team has argued that the machine itself is not a person and that the recipient is not committing an offence by collecting or using the pills.
However, there has been no court ruling establishing that this particular distribution model falls outside Article 152 §2.
Abortion Dream Team itself does not claim that the issue has been conclusively resolved by a court. In its launch material, the group says it has worked with legal experts to protect users and those involved in the project.
That is therefore best understood as the organisers’ legal strategy, not an established judicial interpretation.
The Wydrzyńska case shows why the distinction matters
The legal risk is not theoretical.
In 2023, Wydrzyńska was convicted after sending abortion pills to a pregnant woman who had sought help from Abortion Dream Team. Prosecutors charged her under Article 152 §2, arguing that supplying the medication amounted to assistance in an unlawful abortion. She was sentenced to eight months of community-based restriction of liberty. The Warsaw-Praga Prosecutor’s Office described the original verdict when it was issued.
That conviction was overturned by the Warsaw Court of Appeal in February 2025, with the case sent back to the lower court for a new trial. The original conviction therefore no longer stands as a final judgment.
The case remains highly relevant because it centred on the same underlying issue now raised by the locker: when does helping somebody obtain abortion medication become criminal assistance under Polish law?
Parliament narrowly rejected decriminalisation
Lawmakers came close to changing that provision in 2024.
A bill intended to partially decriminalise abortion assistance and certain abortions performed with the pregnant woman’s consent passed through committee but was defeated at its final Sejm vote on 12 July 2024 by just three votes: 215 MPs supported it, 218 opposed it and two abstained. The Sejm’s legislative record for bill No. 176 records the vote.
A later proposal, parliamentary bill No. 611, again seeks partial decriminalisation, including help given to somebody carrying out a self-managed abortion. It remains in the legislative process. A committee meeting scheduled for 14 September 2026 to consider the proposal was cancelled because the Health Ministry had not provided its position.
The governing coalition has therefore not produced a parliamentary majority for the broader change sought by abortion-rights campaigners.
Legal abortions remain relatively uncommon
Official healthcare figures also illustrate the gap between abortions performed within the state healthcare system and the much larger numbers claimed by activist networks.
National Health Fund data reported earlier this year showed 851 publicly funded abortions in Polish hospitals in 2025. A separate NFZ release for the first half of that year recorded 411 procedures.
By comparison, Abortion Dream Team and Women Help Women say their networks collectively assist around 130 abortions per day, predominantly using medication. That figure comes from the organisations themselves and cannot be directly compared with the official hospital total because it covers a different population and includes abortions outside the Polish hospital system.
The locker is intended to make one part of that informal system faster and more discreet.
For users, the practical innovation is straightforward: instead of waiting for a package to arrive at a home address, someone who has already contacted Women Help Women can collect the medication from a secure compartment in central Warsaw.
The political and legal implications are less straightforward.
The organisations behind the project explicitly present it as a response to a law they want changed. Polish criminal law still penalises some forms of assistance in obtaining an unlawful abortion, while the specific legality of an automated locker dispensing medication under this model has not yet been determined by a court.
That means the device is both a working service and a new test of where Poland’s existing abortion law draws the boundary between self-managed abortion, which is not criminalised for the pregnant woman, and assisting somebody else to obtain one.
