Poland: UN Experts Call For Justyna Wydrzyńska’s Acquittal

GENEVA (4 March 2025) – UN experts* today urged Poland to acquit human rights defender Justyna Wydrzyńska, who was sentenced in March 2023 to eight months of community service – 30 hours a month – for “helping to perform an abortion”. Wydrzyńska’s sentence was overturned in February 2025, and she is facing a new trial.

“The work of individuals like Ms Wydrzyńska remains one of the few avenues for safe abortion in Poland, where access to services to terminate a pregnancy is virtually non-existent in practice,” the experts said. “Human rights defenders like her should be protected, not prosecuted.”

Justyna Wydrzyńska is not just a human rights defender, she is a survivor of domestic violence, who intimately understands the urgency of bodily autonomy and the right to live free from coercion and abuse, the experts noted. She is the founder of the website “Women on the Net” — Poland’s first online forum supporting women seeking safe abortion, contraception or sexual education. For nearly two decades, she has been conducting awareness-raising campaigns and trainings against the stigma of abortion.

In 2020, Wydrzyńska helped a woman victim of domestic violence who was seeking support to voluntarily terminate her pregnancy. However, the victim’s violent husband had contacted the police and denounced his wife’s intention to terminate the pregnancy as well as Wydrzyńska’s involvement. Wydrzyńska was arrested thereafter.

The experts called on Poland to comply with its international obligations and review its legislation to decriminalise abortion and make it lawful and accessible

Poland’s abortion ban – one of the most restrictive in Europe – has already cost lives.The experts recalled a Constitutional Court ruling of 2020, which declared unconstitutional a provision of the 1993 Abortion Admissibility Act allowing abortion in cases where a prenatal test or other medical considerations indicated a high probability of a severe and irreversible fetal defect or an incurable disease that threatens the life of the fetus. “The 2020 Constitutional Court Decision has led to the erosion of women’s sexual and reproductive health rights, forcing many to either risk their lives in unsafe procedures or seek care abroad,” the experts said.

“Women must be ensured adequate access to essential medicine required for safe self-management of abortion in an affordable and non-discriminatory manner, including through telemedicine, in line with WHO guidelines on abortion,” they said.

“We urge Poland to stop targeting human rights defenders – in particular those who speak out against the country’s restrictive abortion law – and to take positive measures to ensure accessible, safe and legal abortion,” the experts said.

“The retrial of Ms Wydrzyńska and her acquittal would be a first step in the right direction.”

The experts have been in contact with the Government of Poland on this matter and submitted a related Amicus Curiae to the European Court of Human Rights.

*The experts: Laura Nyirinkindi (Chair), Claudia Flores (Vice-Chair), Dorothy Estrada Tanck, Ivana Krstić, and Haina Lu, Working group on discrimination against women and girls; Gina Romero, Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association; Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders

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