Under Attack: The Fight For Abortions in Poland

In late October of 2020 protestors descended upon the streets of Poland’s largest cities. An affront to both coronavirus restrictions and the brutal action taken by the police, protestors stood up valiantly in cities like Warsaw and Krakow to fight against the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) party’s latest attempt to erode the rights of Polish citizens. Voting in a new law that threatens to end abortion access for the majority of Polish women.

Since the fall of the USSR Poland has struggled to define its national identity, and as the idea of “Polishness'' becomes more obscure,  PiS (Law and Justice) have weaponized notions of tradition and identity to ignite their base and join the many other far-right parties that have risen to power across Europe. Initially PiS began, like their neighbours Fidesz in Hungary did, by fear mongering. Their first target were the many refugees fleeing violence and war in the MENA region, then it was the LGBTQ+ community, and finally women. 

Leader and co-founder of the party Jaroslaw Kazcynski has said that refugees are not welcome in Poland, and openly called the LGBTQ+ community “threat” to Polish values, now his sights have turned to the women of Polish society. 

Just a year after winning their first election the party attempted to introduce a total ban on abortion, threatening jail time for both women and doctors as well as committing to investigating any miscarraigges. In this time Kazcynski was quoted as saying “We will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, [women] end up giving birth so that the child can be baptised, buried, and have a name.” 

These comments and the proposal of such a complete ban sparked major protest all the way back in 2016, though the world wasn’t paying as much attention at the time. It was in reaction to all of this that Polish women began the Black Monday Protests. The tradition of Black Protests has endured especially in major cities like Warsaw and Krakow since then, but in October of 2020 something broke in Polish politics that reignited the movement and brought international attention to Polish women. 

In their just 5 years of power Law and Justice managed to disturb the balance of the Constitutional Tribunal by appointing judges that they knew would remain loyal to the party. Now, of the 15 judges that sit on this tribunal which is responsible for the judicial review of certain laws 14 are known to be loyal to PiS - a clear affront to the very nature of the tribunal itself. This power is proving to be incredibly dangerous, and it's just one of the reasons there were so many people in attendance at the October 2020 protests. 

Image from foreignpolicy.com

After spending the last 5 years in power uprooting and decimating Poland’s system of checks and balances their previously tabled restrictions on abortions were now possible - a testament to what they can now achieve. Previously abortion was only accessible under 3 conditions - threat to the life of the mother, sexual assault, or fetal abnormality. The bill which passed late last year said that fetal abnormalities, which account for 98% of Poland’s legal abortions, will no longer be a justification.

This reignited the feminist movement and even amid pandemic restrictions thousands and thousands of Poles poured into the streets to defend women’s rights, abortion rights, and the very future of Polish democracy. With 4 more years of their reign over Poland ahead many feminists across the country fear this won’t be the last attack on their rights to come.  

As the movement both for women and against PiS grows, the youth are coming to the forefront. I spoke with one youth activist, Antonina from one of Poland’s more progressive cities in the north, and she told me a bit about her experience. 

Amid the chaos, and despite being just 17, she too felt the weight of this moment in time so she took it upon herself to get involved. She and 4 other student leaders got together and organised a protest in her home city of Gdansk. The protest was illegal because of the current COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings and in setting it up she was well aware that it means she now has a criminal record saying: “It was illegal [...] but honestly whatever they [the police] do it was definitely worth it because the cause is way more important to me than actually having something on my record or in my CV” 

Their first protest saw a turnout of around 3,000 people and after collaborating with another, larger group their turn out hit about 6,000 protestors. While this was all amazing in the end, Antoninia admits setting all of this up was incredibly hard commenting; “We did a lot of work mostly with other organisations because there are lots of NGOs right now that want to do something good [in Poland] but sometimes the communication was hard [...] I mean, we are kids and we didn’t really know what we were doing. It isn’t something we do every day.”

She, like many young women and young people at large, is occupying political spaces in a way that is new and unfamiliar. For years now the youth across the world have been taking up even more space in activism and local politics, and last fall this sentiment made its way to Poland. We are entering a new era of Polish activism, one where the youth are coming to terms with their role as political actors and the situation they have been born into. As Antonina puts it; “the political situation with PiS is deeply complicated and is rooted in Polish culture. The divisions were here way before I was born - it's the country [rural areas]  vs the cities and the old vs the young. It's a similar mechanism that we are seeing in the US and France with Marie Le Pen”

On the 27th of January the government officially made this law, sparking yet again more protest. These moments of massive unrest have to be followed up by further action which the Polish people have clearly committed themselves to doing.* The fight continues to spill over into 2021 and though it began in 2016 there is the same fervour and large scale mobilization. This isn’t PiS’ first attempt to limit women’s rights, it isn’t their first attack on a vulnerable population, and for Antonina and many other young people in her position these are terrifying times. 

She says that this moment back in October was a time of realisation. The protests were the “wake up moment for the youth.” She continues, “this was the first time when many of my friends who were never into politics understood that actually they need to be interested in it, because if you are not interested in politics, the politics will get interested in you.” 

This moment in time is so important, as she and her peers come into adulthood under this protofascist regime it feels that the political landscape of Poland no longer welcomes her. She opened up about her own fears about the changes she is seeing saying: “They have been in power since I was 13, and my family is very political so I have been aware of what is happening since the beginning. [...] I am pretty scared, I don’t want to stay in Poland for my studies but I hope I will come back.[..] It is home but with the current party, the government, and the current situation I just feel scared especially when it comes to abortion rights, womens rights, and the discrimination. It’s really not safe for many people here which is really scary and sad.” 

As these divisions over body politics, reproductive rights, and the nature of human rights as a whole continue to rage on in Poland there are greater questions to be answered about the future of their country. These protests were about preserving women’s rights but they were also about what it means to be Polish today. Will Poland continue, after the next four years, to be a country that calls for conflict and discrimination, or will it be a place where women like Antonina can feel safe? 

These are the questions the Polish people will need to answer for themselves, for the women in their lives, and for the future of their nation. With PiS shifting the very foundation of Poland’s two party system, and its judicial review, and even attempting to sever ties with the European Union some have called into question if this will be a choice for the people to make. Antonina, however, feels confident that Poland’s democracy will continue to thrive long after PiS leaves office.

Though the next election is about 4 years away she is excited to be able to fully voice her opinion as she expressed excitedly, “I really look forward to voting for the first time.” For now though, she, like so many other Polish teenagers, has to rely on activism and education to fight off the worst actions of their current government. 

In a moment in time where the world seems to be in complete political turmoil, the youth continue to be a saving grace and a guiding light towards hope for a better democracy and even more rights not just for women but everyone. 

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Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

STD Testing at Home: My Experience with NURX

Photo by Natali Voitkevich via Pexels

I was not paid to endorse or use NURX, I bought and took their STD test out of my own curiosity.

In the first couple weeks of the pandemic, the questions were all about the essentials. What's going to happen to me? Will I be able to get toilet paper? Will global distribution chains of food dry up? There were many immediate concerns such as these while we huddled indoors and bought camping equipment, pasta, and sourdough starters. But as the months wore on, other less pressing issues started coming to the forefront.

One of the pressing ones for me was the question of reproductive healthcare. My normal clinic was closed except for emergencies, and I didn't think my regular STD checkup would be considered one, although mentally I was close. As a sexually active person who is also polyamorous, I am usually fastidious about STD and sexual health checkups and until the pandemic, I would go every three months or so. But now, I didn't know where to go. It was starting to make me feel anxious, and I wanted to put my mind at ease, and take care of my health.

Almost as if by magic, the internet daddy Google started advertising Nurx to me via instagram and facebook and all of the other unmentionable places I lurk on the internet, and I was immediately interested. A STD test you could take at home? Perfect for quarantine. Nevertheless, I hemmed and hawed about getting it because I was unsure if it was as reliable as it said it was, and also it came with a decent price tag, whereas previously, all of my STD tests were free through my insurance. Not knowing when the pandemic would end though, I decided that it was worth a shot.

When the kit came, it was packaged in a cute little box that opened up in such a cute way I was almost disappointed that there wasn't shoes or chocolates inside. There were many different packages and labeled bits and bobs, but the instructions were really easy to read and easier to use. It was definitely a bit weird and uncomfortable to do the tests myself, but it was outweighed by my genuine curiosity and slight feeling of glee in doing these on my own. Finally, I can play the Doctor my mom always wanted me to be.

One throat swab and one vaginal swab later, I was left with the blood test. You use a little disposable lancet to prick the side of your finger and then you squeeze several drops of blood onto a little tab. I think of the many times I've been to the lab to get this test done, and how they've always taken two or three vials of blood out of my arm. Can they really accurately test me with just one finger of blood on a little business card? Time will tell. This process is not for the faint of heart, it does hurt a tiny bit, but surprisingly, it was not as bad as I thought it would be, and I could easily do it again if necessary.

After all of that, I packaged everything up neatly and put it into a little box to send back to the company. Postage is already prepaid so I just took it to my local post office to tip into the mail slot. It took about 10 days to get my results back, which is a little longer than they promised on the website (but considering the overworked state of healthcare in this pandemic I was more than willing to give them a break), but I got my results by text, email, and then through the private messaging function on their website. All negative! Yay for me.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. I really enjoyed the process and overall, it took me fifteen minutes maximum to do all the testing bits (I had to wait until the blood card fully dried before I could put it back into the packet which took a bit longer) but honestly, it was a lot more convenient than having to go to the clinic. A feature that I also liked was that you could reach out to your designated provider via the website at any time with your health questions, just as you would at the doctor's office. The cost can be a bit prohibitive, I think it was about $200 dollars for me overall, but during a pandemic in which my usual methods of sexual health monitoring aren't available? This worked just fine and I'll definitely be doing it again.

Planned Parenthood vs. My High Priced OBGYN - A Study in Comparisons by Jessica Stilling

Photo by Dainis Graveris from Pexels

I work at a religious school, and therefore I get my health insurance through them, which means that I was unable to get them to pay for my IUD (intrauterine device) for birth control. The unfairness of that situation is a whole other article in and of itself but I remember when I first took this job at said very progressive (and apparently feminist) religious institution and spoke with the insurance company about switching my insurance,  a very nice, fresh faced woman said, “Don’t worry about birth control, we’ll figure it out. We feel very strongly about a woman’s access to birth control.” But when I needed to have my old IUD taken out and replaced, the woman I talked to on the phone said, in a very sunny voice, “I’m sorry, we won’t pay for that if it’s for contraception.” I was reminded why I never, ever shop at Hobby Lobby. 

At the end of the day, I couldn’t afford to go to my regular OBGYN for an IUD and so I called Planned Parenthood. And they took me, right away. And they helped me get an IUD, no questions asked. But I was still nervous about going to Planned Parenthood. I wasn’t worried about the stigma of using the non-profit medical facility. I wasn’t worried that I’d walk into a Pro-Life rally outside their doors. But doctor’s offices can get crowded, especially in New York City. The wait once you get into the waiting room can run an hour, sometimes more, past your appointment time, ask any New Yorker who has ever had to see a doctor on their lunch break. And I was worried about that. Would it be crowded? Would it be discombobulated? Would the doctor spend three seconds with me and do a less than perfect job? Spoiler alert, all of my fears were unfounded, my Planned Parenthood experience was great but what surprised me so much was how much better I was treated there than at my regular doctor’s. While I originally decided to explore Planned Parenthood because of price, it turned out things like wait time and convenience were also factors. 

While my entire experience with my insurance and that ridiculous Obamacare add-on that has harmed so many women financially, not to mention medically, is definitely an issue I’d love to explore, here I’d like to compare my experience at Planned Parenthood with the experiences I’ve had with my very nice, very experience Upper West Side OBGYN. First, I should say that I’ve had two children and before my children were born I went to this same gynecologist for birth control for many years and so I’ve had experience with my OB. I also want to say that I live in New York City, a place where even when things are nice and expensive they can still be crowded, full of poor service and long waits - even when you have an appointment. Perhaps if I lived elsewhere I would not have the same complaints about my OB but then again, the Planned Parenthood I visited was also in New York City. I visited The Margaret Sanger Center on Bleeker Street. It’s the only Planned Parenthood in Manhattan. There is exactly one Planned Parenthood in each borough of New York City and as you can imagine, there are countless ONGYNs across the five boroughs. 

After my time at Planned Parenthood I started to wonder not just about my OBGYN but about other experiences with high priced New York City doctors and came to the conclusion that maybe New Yorkers aren’t getting what they pay for.  

Wait Time

When I called my OB to get an appointment for an IUD at first my OBGYN, a woman who had delivered my children, who I had gone to many times throughout the years, could not find my information and asked me to enter their system as a new patient. Then they told me I would need to make three or four appointments in order to get the IUD put in. “You’ll need to come for a consultation, then you’ll need an appointment to take your current IUD out. Then you’ll need to make another appointment to have the IUD put in and you might need a follow-up appointment.” I asked then they could get me in. They told me they could see me for the first appointment in about four months. I thought I had left plenty of time, calling with about two months advance notice before my IUD was set to expire. I never thought they’d make me wait that long. 

Planned Parenthood actually had my information on file from a time I had gone there when I was in college, many, many years ago. I’d never updated that information since I only saw them once, during a time when I was between insurance providers when I was in college. They still had the address of the apartment where I lived when I was in college. They still had my maiden name. But they were happy to update my information. 

I figured that it would take longer to get an appointment with Planned Parenthood than it would my OBGYN and so I braced for a long wait. At Planned Parenthood I was able to get an appointment for three weeks in the future. The system asked me what I needed done and there was an option for “IUD removal and reinsertion of new IUD” right on the menu. It would take one appointment to do all three. That meant that I only had to take off one afternoon from work. I only had to take the long subway ride downtown once. I only needed to pay for one appointment. 

Price

This is of course why I decided to go to Planned Parenthood to begin with. Since my insurance company wouldn’t pay for my IUD it was all going to be out of pocket and we all know that insurance companies can negotiate a rate with a provider but out of pocket payers pay more. When I asked my OB’s office what they thought the IUD would cost they said, “You’ll need to pay out of pocket for at least two of the three appointments, and that’s assuming nothing goes wrong. And you’ll need to pay for the IUD itself. It’ll probably be around $5000.00” 

I honestly went to Planned Parenthood thinking it would cost around $500 for an IUD there, especially since I only needed to do one appointment with them. I was willing to spend up to $1000 before I started to wonder if an IUD was really worth it if I had to pay out of pocket. When I got to Planned Parenthood, ready to write them a check, I was told to go to the Finance Desk. When I spoke with the woman there she was very kind. I told her I was getting an IUD and then asked how much it would all cost. I braced myself as she said, “Okay, that’s free of charge. We received a grant for that, you won’t pay anything.” I asked them what that meant and apparently Planned Parenthood had recently received a grant to cover the cost of IUDs but even when there was a cost to the patient, it was minimal. I will say I wrote a big check (just not a $5000 check) as a donation to Planned Parenthood that day. 

Experience 

I only went to get my IUD once, from Planned Parenthood, and so my comparison when it comes to my experience really goes back to my other experiences with my OBGYN throughout the years. She not only delivered my children and was my primary OB for many years, but she put in my first IUD, the one I got after I had my second child. 

Wait Time

The usual wait time at my OB was about 45 minutes. There were times when it took an hour, other times when it took thirty minutes, but I always waited. And I understand why, sometimes an OB gets called away to deliver a child or handle an emergency. But there are other less noble reasons for a long wait time at the doctor’s office. I’ve also read about overbooking and how many doctors are forced to overbook to cover the cost of rent and insurance issues. But I would usually wait 30 to 45 minutes before I was called back to get my vitals taken by a nurse. I would then wait another 10 to 15 minutes for the doctor. 

When I went to Planned Parenthood they called me right back to speak to the Finance Department, where they promptly told me I owned them nothing. I then waited all of five minutes to be called back to the nurse, who explained the process of IUD insertion to me. She also explained the basic differences between the two types of IUDs they offered. She counseled me on which IUD to choose and then asked if I wanted to get tested for any STDs. She took my blood, she took my vitals. Then she sent me back to another waiting area. I took out my book, thinking I’d be waiting a while only to be called back to the doctor about 5 minutes later. I remember being a little let down that I hadn’t gotten to read more of my book.

The Doctor

This is where the comparison is much less. Both my doctor’s were great. I like my OBGYN. We would always chat a bit before getting started. She had a dry sense of humor that I enjoyed. She did her job, had a nice bedside manner. Her staff was very friendly as well. But even with all the small talk, I was usually out of her hair in about fifteen to twenty minutes. 

The doctor at Planned Parenthood was very friendly as well - all smiles and she was really willing to talk to me. I had a few questions about the type of IUD to use. In fact I told her (this might be TMI) that I hadn’t really had a steady period in many years. The doctor paused, then she said, “Actually with this new information I would recommend the other IUD. It is said to be better for women who do not have regular periods.” I won’t go into the medical nitty-gritty of what she said, but basically she did a very good job explaining in both medical (with her sources cited, she checked and showed them on her computer which was right next to her) and then in layman’s terms, just why she thought I should go with the other IUD. She then went through the process of going through the paperwork to change the IUD. A few minutes later, she took my old IUD out and reinserted the other. The experience wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t painful. She gave me a maximum strength aspirin and then left the room so I could change. After I had changed she returned to debrief and I told her, “I just want to say, you guys do great work here.” We then had a ten minute conversation about Planned Parenthood, woman to woman, feminist to feminist, before I left her exam room. 

I left feeling taken care of and respected as a person and a patient. The doctor spent nearly an hour with me from the time I entered the exam room to the time I left and when I left her office and returned to the waiting room, it was not crowded, only a couple of people were waiting, which seemed to say that even when the doctor spent so much time on a patient, other patients were also being taken care of. 

The Facilities 

Obviously my Upper West Side doctor’s office is very nice. The walk there is pleasant, it’s near a subway station, when you go inside the chairs are nice, it is air conditioned/well heated. It is well lit. There is water out for the patients. There is not a lot of noise and there are many magazines for people to read. 

The Planned Parenthood that I went to is also in a nice neighborhood - the East Village of Manhattan. It had been in the area for a very long time and I know that the East Village wasn’t always a nice place to be. However, when I went, it was a pleasant stroll by book stores and bistros, hipsters wandered the streets alongside business people and moms in yoga pants. The neighborhood is not for everyone, but it’s pleasant. There was more security when I walked into Planned Parenthood, which is to be expected when its doctors are constantly receiving death threats. My bag was searched by a security guard and I had to walk through metal detectors when I came in. The space was large and there were many rooms of chairs for people to sit. They did not have water out but it was well lit and decorated in a modern style. There wasn’t any reading material out for patients, except materials relating to Planned Parenthood and its services. 

Cavate 

I understand that this is just one experience that I had with Planned Parenthood and that other people may have had vastly different experiences. I also understand that I went to the flagship Planned Parenthood in Manhattan and if I had gone to a Planned Parenthood in a small town or in the Bronx, where it is located in a much more inner-city area, I might have seen different sights and had a vastly different experience. But I wanted to explore not just my personal experience with Planned Parenthood, but the fact that my experience differed so much to my experience with my own OBGYN, who is also based in Manhattan. 

Analysis 

The questions I really have after considering both experiences are not, why was my Planned Parenthood experience so pleasant, but why isn’t my regular OBGYN more like this? Why do I wait so long for an appointment and then have to wait so long to see the doctor once I get there? Why did my doctor want me to make three appointments when Planned Parenthood only wanted me to make one? What I found so interesting about my two different experiences really comes down to money. My OBGYN is paid mostly through insurance companies and so she stands to make more money charging for three or four appointments to do a procedure that Planned Parenthood did for me in one single one hour visit. My OBGYN gets paid for each visit, Planned Parenthood usually doesn’t get paid anything for a visit and so it incentivises them to do what they need to do without asking a patient to come in for multiple appointments. The difference in wait time for appointments and the wait time in the office’s waiting room also comes down to money, as more and more doctor’s offices overbook so that they can cram in more appointments, and therefore more insurance dollars. I did not sacrifice anything as far as care at Planned Parenthood. My Planned Parenthood doctor obviously cared about my health, just like my regular OBGYN does. I remember being very nervous to go to Planned Parenthood, and it turns out not only were those fears unfounded but I had the best experience at a New York City doctor’s office that I have had in a very long time.