'Declare it to a doctor, and it's over': Ukrainian women face harsh reality of Poland's abortion law

‘Declare it to a doctor, and it’s over’: Ukrainian women face harsh reality of Poland’s abortion laws

Women turn to aid groups for help, with many unaware their rights to reproductive healthcare have vanished upon crossing the border

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Myroslava Marchenko was a gynaecologist in Kyiv before the war. She now advises Ukrainian women about their reproductive rights in Poland. Photograph: Anna Liminowicz/The Guardian


When the first Russian bombs fell on Ukraine, Myroslava Marchenko was a gynaecologist at a private clinic in Kyiv. The next day, one of her patients was due to have an abortion after prenatal tests showed a high chance of Down’s syndrome. Instead, like millions across the country, Marchenko and her patient fled to safety, crossing the border into Poland where abortions due to foetal abnormalities – or “on eugenic grounds” in the language of the country’s constitutional tribunal – are illegal. “She called me and said, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t know what to do, because time is running out and my pregnancy is growing, but I don’t want to raise this child because it’s war, and I can’t manage it,’” Marchenko recalls. It was, she says, the first time that she understood the impact that Poland’s abortion laws, and the barriers that had been erected to prevent women accessing emergency contraception, could have on individual lives. Marchenko told her patient she should leave Poland and travel to the Czech Republic in order to access a safe termination.

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More than 2 million Ukrainians have found refuge in Poland since the beginning of the war in February; the vast majority are women with children. While the two countries share history, culture and a border, women’s access to reproductive healthcare is radically different. In Ukraine, abortions are legally provided on request in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, oral contraception is sold over the counter without prescription and the morning-after pill is readily available. In Poland, abortion is almost completely outlawed and access to contraception is ranked as the worst in Europe, according to the European Parliamentary Forum. Many doctors refuse to prescribe emergency contraception or even IUDs (intrauterine devices) on ethical grounds, arguing that they are akin to an abortion.

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Oxana Lytvychenko, a Ukrainian reproductive rights activist who helps refugees arriving in Poland. Photograph: Anna Liminowicz/The Guardian

Oxana Lytvynenko, a Ukrainian reproductive rights activist who has lived in Poland for 16 years and has been helping refugees in reception points since the war began, says that some women have no idea that their access to reproductive healthcare services will vanish upon crossing the border. “[Ukrainian refugees crossing the border] are completely unprepared for the situation here, they don’t know the law. Even if someone has read an article somewhere about abortion in Poland, [many] still think, ‘OK, so they don’t do abortion on demand, but if there is a good reason then they will do it,’” she says. “It’s difficult because you don’t want to re-traumatise these women just after they are so happy to be safe again. It doesn’t feel like the right moment to tell them the truth.”
Lytvynenko says she has met women at the border who have asked her to help them access medication to terminate a pregnancy, but says that the ability to access reproductive healthcare services is down to chance.



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A member of rights group Femen paints the phrase ‘Free and safe abortion for Ukrainian women in Poland’ on a fellow activist in Madrid, Spain, May 2022. Photograph: Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images

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While Marchenko waits to receive a Polish medical licence she has been working with Federa, a Polish women’s rights organisation, to launch a Ukrainian-language hotline for women seeking help on where to access reproductive healthcare services. She says the hotline receives about 10 calls a day, 10% of which are queries on how to access an abortion.

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“My only hope is that none of the Ukrainian women who need an abortion try to get it legally in Poland,” said Lytvynenko. “I hope they just keep driving westward to Germany. Because once they declare the pregnancy to the doctor, it’ll be over for them.”


https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/may/10/ukrainian-women-face-harsh-reality-poland-abortion-laws