"Use Crisis Smartly"

When Natalia Broniarczyk and her colleagues opened Poland’s first “abortion center” this March, they felt fearless. In 2022, Polish voters had elected a president who’d promised to liberalize the country’s strict abortion laws, but now, the next election was approaching, and nothing had changed. Instead of waiting for their government to act, the Abortion Dream Team — a collective of four Polish activists who’d joined forces in 2016 to spread knowledge about abortion pills — decided to take matters into their own hands. Polish law prevents physicians from dispensing abortion pills, but it does not criminalize taking the medication. So, on March 8 — International Women’s Day — the Dream Team opened a center where people could come to learn where to order the medications and how to take the pills, directly across the street from the Polish parliament.

Natalia Broniarczyk and Justyna Wydrzynska, founding members of the Abortion Dream Team activists group, Abortion Without Borders Polish branch organisation and Abotak abortion centre in Warsaw, during their regular Monday duty in the centre. While in the center, they keep also answering to The Abortion Without Borders helpline, which is open daily from 8am to 8pm. This Monday, before midday, Justyna already answered 14 phone calls from women themselves, their mothers or partners asking for help and guidance. Warsaw, Poland, July 2025.

This “is the most important street in Warsaw,” Broniarczyk tells me. “All of the decisions are happening here. So, abortion should also be here.”

The center’s location made sense on a practical level: “We were thinking that if we’re going to be in the center of all of this,” with soldiers patrolling the streets outside, “no one will attack us physically,” she adds. “I didn’t appreciate enough our anti-abortion movement.”

On the center’s opening day, anti-abortion activists descended. Broniarczyk leans forward to show me a video of the antis pouring fake blood onto the sidewalk outside Abotak (the center’s name: a combination of the Polish words for Abortion and Yes) as police watch. They’ve returned three times a week since, bringing with them drums, kazoos, and speakers to blast the sound of crying babies. Broniarczyk has started receiving threatening Facebook messages saying antis know where she walks her dogs. Some days, trucks drive by with photos of Broniarczyk and her colleagues pasted on the side.

“They are not so scary as yours; they don’t have guns,” she says. “But the strategy, the things they are saying, I see that the inspiration also comes from the U.S. They are calling themselves the Army of Christus; they are calling themselves Warriors of Life. It’s very American.” 

Broniarczyk and her colleague Justyna Wydrzyńska — the first Polish activist arrested for giving another woman abortion pills in 2022 — contacted local officials for help when the protesters began appearing. 

“The city council just said that it’s a legally registered protest,” says Wydrzyńska. She worried protesters might harm their elderly neighbors or women trying to reach the clinic — so much so that she considered closing Abotak. But members of the community — both online and in person — reached out to offer their support and encourage her to keep it open. A handful of elderly women living in apartments upstairs hung a banner from their balcony proclaiming, “Pro-life protesters, let us live!”

I had come to Abotak curious about what activists in the United States could learn from Abortion Dream Team’s efforts to challenge Polish abortion laws. Instead, I found Polish feminists looking toward the U.S. for advice on organizing clinic escorts and security protocols.

“Poland right now is like the 51st state of the U.S., in my opinion, and it’s more like Texas than California,” Broniarczyk says. As she speaks, my eyes drift to tattoos on her arms reading “Call Jane” and “SYA,” references to the U.S. abortion advocacy groups the Jane Collective and Shout Your Abortion. “We were very, very inspired by the American movement, by Shout Your Abortion, We Testify, all of these groups that were starting to do this storytelling,” Broniarczyk says. 

That inspiration flipped when, just months ahead of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, U.S. activists traveled to Poland for an “abortion camp.” There, Abortion Dream Team taught American feminists how to safely order and take abortion pills, as Polish activists had begun doing after their country tightened its already strict abortion laws in 2020.

“This is something I said to American activists: Use crisis smartly,” says Broniarczyk. “If they push you to the wall, take a spray and write a hotline number.” Crisis is difficult, but also a “special moment to show other women that they should also organize.”

Feminist and pro abortion “goodies” are sold in the centre. All income goes to financing abortions for people in need. They sell socks, t-shirts, hoodies, bags, but also pins, mugs and books about sex, sexuality and destigmatisation of abortion experience. Warsaw, Poland, July 2025.

Polish politicians have reneged on their promises to expand access to abortion care because abortion is largely accessible in Poland, she says, even if only through pills purchased online and shipped from abroad. But for Abortion Dream Team, that’s not enough.

“We don’t need this place [Abotak] to do our work. If we have pills, we can do it everywhere,” she adds. “But for me, keeping this place for the political reason is important. Because thanks to pills, abortion is accessible but totally invisible.”

Abotak has a “misolation room” (mizolatka in Polish; the nickname comes from the abortion medication misoprostol). It’s a small room with an attached bathroom, a pink armchair and a beanbag, plants, and posters reading “We Will Save Us.” In its first four months, Abotak supported eight abortions in person — primarily teenagers or college students who could not take the pills privately elsewhere. They bided their time in “misolation,” eating pizza or watching TV, Broniarczyk says, and they left messages in dry-erase marker on the bathroom door: “Thank you for being here,” and “Praise to aborters.” Abotak also operates a hotline to help people taking the medications at home and connects those with pregnancies beyond 12 weeks — the limit for when they’re comfortable helping with medication abortions — to clinics outside of Poland. 

The future of the center is still uncertain, Broniarczyk and Wydrzyńska admit. But the future of Abortion Dream Team is clear. Whether it means purchasing a vehicle to house a mobile center or moving to a more discreet location, Wydrzyńska says, “We are thinking about Plan B, C, and D to avoid those protests and still help people.” ––Cecilia Nowell

Cecilia Nowell is a reporter focused on global and local health care stories.