The trial of Justyna Wydrzynska continues. The husband of the woman to whom the defendant sent abortifacients testified before the court

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· The trial of Justyna Wydrzyńska, an activist of the Abortion Dream Team, is underway before the Warsaw-Prague District Court.

· The indictment alleges aiding and abetting a pharmacological abortion.

· At the last hearing appeared the first of the witnesses - the father of the child whom the accused wanted to assist in the abortion.

· The hearing was attended by a representative of Ordo Iuris, which is participating in the proceedings as a social organization.

· Earlier, the Institute gave the court an opinion in which it reminded the court that the protection of the lives of unborn children is based on norms derived from the Constitution, international law and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court.

The prosecutor is charging Justyna Wydrzynska with a crime under Article 152 § 2 of the Criminal Code, that is, aiding and abetting the performance of an abortion in violation of the law. This act carries a penalty of up to 3 years in prison. The activist is also accused of violating Article 124 of the Pharmaceutical Law. This provision criminalizes the storage of medicinal products for the purpose of marketing them without a permit. Justyna Wydrzynska pleaded not guilty, explaining that she was guided by compassion and emotion when handing over abortifacients to the woman.

The trial has been ongoing since April 2022. On January 11, 2023, the fourth hearing was held. Present at it, as at previous ones, was a representative of the Ordo Iuris Institute, which is taking part in the proceedings as a social organization.

At previous hearings, the witnesses - the woman to whom Justyna Wydrzynska sent the abortifacients and her husband - could not be heard. Now only the man appeared. His hearing was held in camera for privacy reasons. At the next hearings, not only the wife is to be questioned again, but also the caregiver who helped them care for their first child.

After the hearing, the court decided that it would ask the MOPS and the relevant district court departments for information on whether there were any proceedings involving her and her husband (either as parties or witnesses). The defense in requesting this (because it was at her request that the court decided to do so) is trying to show that the mother whom Justyna Wydrzynska assisted in the abortion was a victim of domestic violence. This is because the defendant claims that she was motivated by compassion and a desire to help a pregnant woman in distress, a victim of domestic violence.

Meanwhile, whether there was violence in this family for Justyna Wydrzynska's criminal responsibility is not really relevant to the case. First of all, because Justyna Wydrzynska's motivation was shaped by the more or less reliable information she had at the time she sent the abortifacients, not by what the court will determine three years later. Secondly, the defendant's claims about her motivation should be evaluated by the court with a great deal of caution, as there is a possibility that it is a contrived line of defense. Moreover, there is no evidence other than the defendant's own explanations for what shaped her motivation and her knowledge of the situation of the woman to whom she sent the abortifacients. 

Moreover, the abortion assistance provided by Justyna Wydrzynska is part of her well-known and undisguised activity for the widest possible access to abortion at every stage of pregnancy. This activity consists of various types of abortion assistance. "Help" of this kind is provided by the Abortion Dream Team to all women who request it, not just those who are supposed to be in a difficult life situation.

Also importantly, the information that Justyna Wydrzyńska had about the situation of the woman to whom she sent abortifacients was, as she said at the hearing, supposedly obtained from another abortion activist. The defendant received it second-hand and made no attempt to verify it. In addition, Justyna Wydrzyńska's understanding of the term "violence" is also questionable. According to her, violence against a woman constitutes, for example, the father's actions to stop an abortion.  Moreover - even if the woman to whom the defendant gave "help" was indeed a victim of violence - this is neither a moral nor legal justification for aborting a pregnancy and making another victim of violence an unborn child.

In the course of the trial, the Ordo Iuris Institute provided the court with an extensive written opinion, in which it showed that Poland is not obliged by any act of international law to allow abortion, and that there is no "right to abortion," let alone one of human rights. This means that Poland has the right to enact laws providing for the punishment of, among other things, assisting an abortion in violation of the law, i.e., in situations in which those conditions in which Polish law has permitted abortion (currently: danger to the life or health of the mother, or when the pregnancy is the result of a crime) do not exist, as well as when other conditions that the law requires are not met, such as that the termination of pregnancy is to be performed by a doctor with certain qualifications.