Consider This from NPR - What Could A Post-Roe Future Look Like? Poland Offers A Glimpse

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Dozens of states could soon take steps to ban or restrict abortion. But there are a lot of unanswered questions about how those laws would be enforced if they vary from state to state, Kim Mutcherson tells NPR. That patchwork of laws is the most likely outcome if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, leaving the U.S. without a federally-protected right to abortion. That's the reality in Poland, where abortion is almost entirely illegal. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on an underground network of reproductive rights activists who risk prison time to help abortion patients.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. If the Supreme Court rules later this year that there is no federally protected right to an abortion, well, in some states the law changes immediately. So many states had already passed legislation, sometimes years ago, making clear that the moment that Roe gets overruled, abortion will be illegal. Kim Mutcherson is a dean and professor of law at Rutgers University. She's talking about so-called

trigger laws in more than a dozen states that would snap into place if and when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. The possibility that the court might strike down Roe has other Republican states, ones without trigger laws, promising to ban abortion as soon as they can, too. So Nebraska is a pro-life state. I believe life begins at conception, and those are babies, too. That's Nebraska's Republican Governor Pete Ricketts on CNN this month, promising to call a special session of state lawmakers to ban abortion if the Supreme Court allows. Including in the case of rape or incest? There's still babies, too, yes. There's still babies. Nebraska

is one of 26 states that are certain or likely to ban abortion if Roe is struck down. That's according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group focused on sexual and reproductive health. Now, it's not clear how states would enforce those bans. Will they pass laws that target people who help abortion patients seek care out of state, like Texas has already done? What about people who acquire abortion medication through the mail? Will providers of that medication be prosecuted if they ship across state lines? And what about the patients who take that medication in the privacy of their own home? Here's Kim Mutcherson with Rutgers University again. There are going to be so many people who are self-managing their abortions that if you really want to stop abortions happening in your jurisdiction, you're going to have to go after medication abortions.

And you're most likely going to have to go after the people who are actually having the abortions, not the people who are giving them their pills. The bottom line, state by state, is that a future without Roe is full of unknowns. But there are places around the world that offer a glimpse of that future. I didn't give it to their hands. Are you saying that carefully because giving someone an abortion pill is a crime in Poland?

Yeah. Three years of prison. Consider this. Many people in the U.S. are beginning to imagine Three years of prison. Consider this. Many people in the U.S. are beginning to imagine a future without a federally protected right to abortion. Of course, there are other countries around the world where they don't have to imagine. Poland is one of those places.

We'll take you there. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Tuesday, May 24th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Before we talk about what the future might look like if Roe is overturned,

let's talk about who would be most affected. People who are low-income, people of color, people living in rural areas. Younger women who tend to find out about their pregnancies later into their pregnancy. Women who are undocumented immigrants, right, this sort of whole range of people. Kim Mutcherson at Rutgers, you heard from her earlier. She says another important thing to consider here is that the United States has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality. And that rate has gone up in recent decades, even as it's gone down in other developed countries. It's also just the simple truth that if you force people to stay pregnant,

more women will die. And that's a truth that's really important for us to remember as these states are passing all of these new laws, that they aren't also thinking about, okay, well, maybe we need to work on our social safety net. Now, again, depending on what happens at the Supreme Court, abortion bans are a real possibility in 26 states. And as we said, there are countries around the world where that's already the reality. One of them is Poland. In 2020, the country's constitutional court banned terminations of pregnancies with fetal defects. Those were nearly the only abortions allowed in Poland at the time, which already had strict limits on the procedure. So abortion

patients looking for care in Poland have to do so in the shadows, where the people who helped them do so at great risk. And it's a risk they're now taking to help refugees from neighboring Ukraine. Ari Shapiro traveled to Poland, where he met some of them. Imagine stepping across a border and discovering that reproductive rights you once took for granted are now a crime. For millions of Ukrainians, that discovery happened when they fled the war in their home country and set foot here in Poland. At the Medica border crossing,

there are bright blue porta-potties for Ukrainian refugees who've just arrived in Poland. And someone has taped flyers inside the doors of these toilets. They offer information in Ukrainian and Russian. My colleague is reading aloud. It says, you are not alone.

The card has phone numbers for a gynecology hotline. There are logos for Polish reproductive rights groups that connect with a network of women's organizations across Europe. Members of these groups take real risks to help refugees and others access reproductive services that they would have no trouble getting in Ukraine. Oksana Litvinenko asked to meet us at our hotel in Warsaw, not at her home or office, because anti-abortion protesters have targeted her personally. My colleague interprets as she speaks. Of course.

Even they were coming to my daughter's school. She was 12 back then. And we have different last names with my daughter. And dad keeps her safe. Litvinenko is Ukrainian and has lived in Poland for 18 years. In a country that has targeted LGBTQ people, she wears a watch with a rainbow wristband. She has a day job which gives her access to the people she helps through her volunteer work. Definitely.

She is a Ukrainian-Polish interpreter. And so when refugees need to end a pregnancy, they confide in her. But she says they rarely ask outright. They use euphemisms. I try to describe it in a different way. They are trying to describe it in other way. They are asking for pills to make period come faster. People in other countries can legally send abortion pills to Poland, but here Litvinenko speaks very carefully.

I didn't give it to their hands. Are you saying that carefully because giving someone an abortion pill is a crime in Poland? Yeah. Three years of prison. Three years of prison. Three years of prison. And yet you still give these women the help they ask for. Polish feminists are different from feminists from other countries because they have a specific goal.

I am feminist and Polish feminists are different than feminists from different countries because they have a real goal. At this Litvinenko sits up straight and smiles for the first time in our conversation. A wry grin. And now I feel that I am most needed here because there are many Ukrainians in Poland and I am an interpreter not only of the language but also of the reality of Poland.

Now I feel here most needed because I'm not only language translator, but also Polish reality translator. The threat of prosecution for helping someone end a pregnancy is real. Justyna Widzińska is a member of a Polish group called Abortion Dream Team. She is the first activist to face criminal charges under this law. She was charged two months ago, accused of helping a woman who was in an abusive relationship and a pregnancy. She was begging us, please help me somehow.

My colleague and PR correspondent Joanna Kakissas spoke with the activist. Because she couldn't travel abroad, he told her that if she traveled with a two-year-old kid, then he would report a kidnapping to the police. And after that, when he just blackmailed her, she decided just to ask if he could please send me pills. But please do it in total secret. But he somehow got the information because he called the police and said she received kind of help from somebody. Vyjanska doesn't know whether prosecutors will be lenient and give her a suspended sentence or make an example out of her and send her to prison for years. There is another layer to this story,

and we'll warn you that this might be difficult to hear. Russian soldiers have used rape as a weapon of war, and that can lead to pregnancy. They want to keep a top secret of this, even they don't want to share this with their families. Kristina Katspura is head of the women's rights group Federa. That's one of the organizations behind those flyers and the porta-potties at the border. Federa has existed since 1991.

Back then, abortion was widely available in Poland. Lately, she's been doing a lot of work with Ukrainian refugees, some of whom have been raped. They said to me, how can I tell about this to my partner or husband? He has been fighting in Ukraine. We want to have a normal life. I don't want to be regarded as a victim of sexual violence, victim of rapes. Even if I sometimes ask them just to be a victim, to certificate this case, no, no.

Technically, Polish law allows abortion in cases of rape. But according to Poland's health ministry, the country has never had more than three such cases in a year. Kacpura says the government makes ending a pregnancy practically impossible even for rape victims. You know, investigation, announcement to the police and prosecutor. Could you imagine a poor Ukrainian woman or girl who will go and answer many questions

and will wait for two weeks for the decision of prosecutor. Kacpura's organization Federa has set up a hotline. It's staffed by a Ukrainian gynecologist, a doctor who is herself a refugee from Kyiv. Sometimes the advice the doctor gives is, call your auntie Basia. The phrase in Polish is Czocha Basha. Czocha Basha, it's a name that you can put in your phone and it doesn't look suspicious because

everyone in Poland has some auntie Basha. Zuzanna Juban is one of many women who identify as Czocha Basha. The B in Basha stands for Berlin. Juban is Polish, but she's living in Germany, where abortion is widely available. In Austria, where we have Auntie Vienna, with the name sounding a little bit like Vienna, and Auntie Czesia in Czech Republic. Those are names that are common in their respective countries. This is an underground network stretching across Europe. From Germany, Juban helps people in Poland who need

abortions. Most often she sends them pills. Other times her collective helps them travel west. They provide train tickets, housing, counseling, whatever people need. I have this limited privilege of living in a country where access to abortion is better than it is in Poland. So I simply feel that I have the obligation to share this privilege. Since the war began in late February, the requests to her network have doubled. By their count, the aunties have helped more than 400 Ukrainians end their pregnancies. I asked Juban to share the story of one of them, and she told me about a woman whose husband was killed by the Russians. She's in Poland for four weeks

and just learned about the death of her husband. And she simply cannot continue this pregnancy. And this was like a really, I had an emotional moment for me, like the war becoming very real through this one story. And I shed some tears, but also supported her in ordering pills, told her where to do it. And yeah, I cried a bit, but then thought, okay, Susa, this is the new reality. Get used to it.

Are you able to go home to Poland? Do you worry that you will be prosecuted if you do? We have this conviction and we try to convince ourselves that the fact that we are doing our activism in Germany where Polish law does not apply, we are relatively safe. But we can never know how Polish prosecutors will interpret situations. And actually, since we are uncertain how this can develop, they start going after activists, for instance, working abroad. Zuzana Juban told me the name of her group, Auntie Basha, comes from a Kenyan collective called Auntie Jane. That group took its name from the Jane Collective,

the underground organization that helped people access abortion in the United States before it was legal. The Jane Collective disbanded after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. NPR's Ari Shapiro. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.