Drone delivers abortion meds in Poland to protest law
A pro-choice group called Women on Waves flew a small drone across a border river from Germany to Poland on Saturday to deliver abortion medication to women there, where abortions are severely restricted by Polish law.
The drop was successful, according to the group. Two women took the abortion-inducing pills, which the group said were prescribed by doctors in a press release distributed online.
You can watch video from the drone flight, below.
The flight over the River Oder from the German town of Frankfurt an der Oder into the Polish town of Slubice only lasted around 60 seconds. Prior to the launch, a group of people gathered on the Polish side of the river bank to grab the medication once the drone landed.
German police took the group’s iPads and drone controllers, according to the press release. Police also pressed criminal charges, though it’s not clear what those charges are.
Women on Waves, a Dutch group that travels by ship to provide abortion services in nations where they are restricted or illegal, orchestrated the drone drop to bring attention to Polish abortion laws, which they view as far more archaic than abortion laws in most European countries.
The number of abortions that take place in Poland is virtually unknowable, according to research presented [link to Word document] by the United Nations. That’s because many of those abortions happen in underground clinics, and Polish women often leave the country to undergo the procedure. United Nations data says that official statistics from 1987 put the number of abortions in Poland that year at around 123,000, but that the number may have been three-four times higher.
The United Nations believes the number of abortions in Poland is high, and that’s in part because reliable contraceptives aren’t widely available, and sex-education courses are lacking.
A 1993 law in Poland made it illegal for women to seek an abortion for socio-economic reasons. It is still legal for women to obtain an abortion if the pregnancy was the result of incest or rape, or the woman’s life is in danger.
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