Polish activists install automated abortion pill locker in Warsaw clinic opposite parliament

The AbortOmat installation

Women's rights organisations Women Help Women and Abortion Dream Team have launched an automated locker in central Warsaw to distribute medical abortion pills. Painted pink and fitted with zebra-striped curtains, the 22-compartment unit, named AbortOmat, enables users to collect medications quickly and anonymously by entering a six-digit code. Organisers designed the service for individuals who cannot or do not want to wait several days for postal delivery, including women experiencing health complications, those facing a missed miscarriage, or those concerned about package privacy at home. The machine functions inside a reproductive support facility established on Wiejska Street by Abortion Dream Team activist Justyna Wydrzyńska and her colleagues. Kinga Jelińska, director of the Women Help Women foundation and co-founder of Abortion Dream Team, outlined the reasoning behind offering direct local pickup.

You can order underwear, cosmetics, mascara, whatever and receive it practically the same or next day. Why not abortion pills, where in some cases there might be more urgency?

Legal navigation and three-year penalties

The deployment of the locker responds directly to statutory constraints under Polish criminal law. While the individual possession or consumption of abortion pills is not illegal in Poland, supplying the medication or assisting another person in obtaining it remains a criminal offence carrying a penalty of up to three years in prison. The advocacy groups structured the locker system to introduce a technical barrier between individual facilitators and recipients. By requiring the user to collect pills directly from an automated locker rather than taking them from a person, the organisers aim to complicate the legal basis for prosecution under existing aiding-and-abetting statutes.

It's a little bit of a hack on the law. The law is about directly giving to someone. So here we have a machine in between, which makes the legality of everything much more vague.

Clinic location opposite the Sejm

The locker operates inside a support centre opened in March 2025 by the Abortion Dream Team directly opposite the Polish parliament building. The facility provides visitors with consultation on pregnancy termination procedures, guidance on obtaining healthcare abroad, and physical space for assistance during miscarriages or pharmaceutical abortions. The opening of the space and the installation of the locker followed mass street demonstrations that started six years earlier, when hundreds of thousands of people protested against court rulings that tightened Poland's abortion framework into one of the most restrictive in Europe.

Stalled legislative reform under Donald Tusk

The street demonstrations contributed to the political momentum that brought Prime Minister Donald Tusk into office in 2023 following promises to overhaul Polish abortion laws within 100 days. Legislative revisions have remained blocked in parliament because coalition parties disagree on reproductive policy. Tusk acknowledged that his government lacked a parliamentary majority to pass legislation permitting elective terminations up to the 12th week of pregnancy. Instead of statutory changes, Tusk told reporters that state authorities would not prosecute individuals who assist in facilitating abortions, leaving grassroots networks to operate through legal grey areas such as automated pickup lockers.