RIGA, Latvia — For two sunny, crisp autumn days in mid-September, Riga’s Stradiņš University felt like the epicenter of a self-styled global civil rights movement: to give every person, in every culture or country, regardless of laws, access to abortion pills.
In the hallways, women pored over posters showing the latest research on the effectiveness of abortion pills and other developments in abortion and contraception care. Representatives from pharmaceutical companies enthusiastically pitched their medications and products to doctors sipping coffee and tea during a break between panels. There were graphic novels about an at-home medical abortion and T-shirts printed with women’s self-stated reasons for ending a pregnancy; there were slogans printed on T-shirts like “Make Abortion Legal Again” and a video promoting abortion rights to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”
The 400 or so doctors, researchers and activists in the room, who hailed from the U.S. and countries across Europe but also much further afield, like Ghana and Georgia and Colombia,had spent their careers working on the issue of abortion: No one in the room questioned a woman’s right to end an unwanted pregnancy, and many were vocal advocates for expanding access as much as possible. In panels and plenary speeches and breakout sessions, expert after expert praised countries that have relaxed abortion restrictions around the globe and extolled the developments in abortion care that have increasingly shifted the procedure toward at-home, self-managed medical abortions.
But halfway through the first day, Kinga Jelinska stepped up on stage to talk about the state of abortion rights in her native Poland — and to deliver a blunt reminder that not everyone has free and easy access to the kind of abortion care they envision. “The dystopian future has already happened in the present,” the 42-year-old activist told those gathered in the wood-paneled lecture hall for a biennial conference on abortion. “We are now in the midst of a global abortion crisis.”
Over the course of her speech, she outlined how dire the situation has become for Polish people seeking abortions in a country that has made legal access to the procedure all but impossible. At one point, she motioned to a dark-haired woman sitting in the front row: Justyna Wydrzyńska, a fellow abortion rights activist in Poland, faces trial over providing abortion pills to a domestic violence victim — a grim example of the stakes for those working in abortion activism. “Soon she might sit somewhere else: in prison,” Jelinska said, adding that “it seems that, right now, half the world thinks abortion pills are a tool of crime.”
A cardboard cutout of the activist Justyna Wydrzyńska, who faces trial for providing abortion pills to a woman in her native Poland, at a conference of abortion providers and researchers in Riga, Latvia.
Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo
Poland isn’t the only country where abortion restrictions have meant pregnant people rely on the underground network of activists to access abortion pills: Malta, too, has strict abortion laws that have hindered the ability to get an abortion. In the past, people on the small island nation who wanted abortions had to travel to mainland Europe to receive them; when the pandemic hit and travel restrictions went into place, that option all but disappeared. Groups like Women on Web have filled the gap, said Andreana Dibben, a Maltese abortion rights activist: She and others help run the Family Planning Advisory Service, an online service launched in 2020 whose trained volunteers have already assisted more than 500 Maltese women with finding appropriate abortion and contraception services. Working with the Abortion Support Network and Women on Web, the group has helped facilitate at-home medical abortions for pregnant people in Malta who want them.
During the conference lunch break one day, Dibben said she sees reasons to be optimistic about change even in countries with tight restrictions: A small but growing group of pro-abortion rights activists in Malta, Dibben said, is having some success in shifting public opinion and increasing political willingness to discuss the issue. Until she and other activists launched Doctors for Choice in 2018, she said, “no one could even say the word ‘abortion’ because people were scared.”
Although these international abortion networks have opened up new possibilities for people in restricted states, they can come with significant risk for those involved — as Wydrzyńska, the activist facing trial in Poland, knows all too well. The longtime abortion activist and co-founder of the Abortion Dream Team, an organization that provides people with advice on abortions, gave a set of abortion pills to a victim of domestic violence in Poland. The woman’s husband, who had prevented her from going to Germany to receive an abortion there, informed the police. Today, Wydrzyńska is waiting for the next hearing of her trial in January. She faces up to three years in prison for helping with a medication abortion.
Wydrzyńska’s case was a rallying cry for attendees at the conference in Riga, bluntly highlighting the sacrifices some make to ensure a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. When Jelinska referred to her during her speech, the audience applauded; outside the main event hall, attendees could pose with their face behind a cardboard cutout of Wydrzyńska, bearing the hashtag #IamJustyna. During coffee and lunch breaks, people constantly came up to speak with Wydrzyńska.
The Amsterdam-based Jelinska, living in a country that has far more liberal abortion laws, operates under less imminent danger of prosecution than those helping the cause in her native Poland. Still, she’s open about the toll her work takes on her daily life, including the regular death threats she receives. “Of course, this affects me,” she said. Despite those threats, she sees no other way: “Sometimes it is necessary to disobey harmful laws.”
In Riga, the activists’ mere presence at the conference,and the impassioned pitch they made to attendees, demonstrated the extent of international cooperation and support for circumventing strict abortion laws. Cross-border helpers based in other countries are, in many cases, what makes access to abortion pills possible for people in places where the procedure is severely restricted. Bringing together doctors working on research showing the safety and efficacy of medical abortions and pharmaceutical companies who manufacture mifepristone and misoprostol and the activists creating this new web of support across country borders was a way for them to learn from each other about the latest research and developments in abortion care, to be sure. But it was also an opportunity for activists like Jelinska and Clarke to make their case and ask for help from a group of people most sympathetic to their cause, whether in front of a podium on stage or over individual conversations between sessions.
Toward the end of the conference, Clarke stepped up to the stage to talk about the Abortion Support Network and underscored just how important gatherings like these are for what they do. It’s rare for there to be so many people in one room who are passionate about the right to end a pregnancy and finding the safest and best ways to do so; as another speaker noted, this field of medicine is “uniquely political.” With that in mind, Clarke asked for the audience’s support however they could give it so they can grow their networks even further: By pushing for looser laws in their respective countries, working to expand access, and even just by supporting groups like hers directly (“We would gladly take your money in any amount in any currency!” her presentation declared).
“Why do a bunch of abortion pirates come to a scientific conference?” Clarke said. “We do this work because whether or not you can have an abortion should not depend on the passport you hold, or where you live, or what money you have, or what gender you are — any of that.”
Carlo Martuscelli, Mandoline Rutkowski and Jakob Korus contributed to this report.