In an act which has been branded “shameful”, pro-abortion campaigners are stepping up their campaign to deliver abortions to women in countries where the practice is illegal by flying abortion pills into Poland via drone.
The “abortion drone” will make its maiden flight this Saturday, traveling from Germany to the Polish border town of Słubice to deliver a package of abortion pills. Women on Waves, one of three organisations behind the campaign claim that as the drone is light, not being used for commercial purposes, and will remain within sight of its pilot, the flight requires no authorisation from either German or Polish authorities.
They also insist that their actions are safe as “medical abortion can easily be done by women themselves at home without supervision by health professionals [as] a medical abortion has the same health impact as a spontaneous miscarriage.”
Pro-life campaigners have slammed the plans as morally repugnant, not only for circumventing the law, but also for putting women’s lives at risk.
Peter D. Williams, executive officer at Right To Life told Breitbart London: “That an abortion organisation plans to violate the law and territory of a sovereign state, and use drones to distribute miscarriage-inducing poisons, is nothing less than a morally repugnant attack on Polish women that shows total disregard for the safety of the vulnerable medically unsupervised recipients of the drugs, the right to life of their unborn children, and the democratic process of Poland itself.
“Shame on them.”
Poland is one of only three countries in Europe to ban abortion (the other two are Malta and Ireland), allowing it only in cases of rape or incest, or in cases where the woman’s life is at risk or the foetus would be born with a severe disability.
Woman on Waves has a long history of circumventing laws to provide otherwise illegal abortions. In 1999, its founder, the Dutch doctor and abortion activist Rebecca Gomperts began by providing abortions on a Dutch registered ship in international waters. She understood that if the ship sailed 12 miles or more off the coast, she could undertake abortions without being prosecuted. She was right.
In March she boasted of her success to the New York Times, telling them “When I look back to the pilot project of the ship today, I realize that I only managed to treat maybe 20 women on board. But looking at how far we have come and the numbers today, I just have one thing to say: My controversial, sometimes questionable and stubborn determination has paid off.”
Since then she has reached many more women by teaching them how to undertake their own medical abortions, at home, without the intervention of a doctor. And by linking up with a range of organisations including LGBT rights groups, she has been able to spread that message far and wide.
“Did you know that in Ecuador they even stamped our hotline numbers on the local currency?” Gomperts says.
The abortion drone is just the first in what she hopes will be a new dawn in abortion provision, allowing abortion pills to be dropped even into remote areas. “Initially it will be a very small drone, not a large one like the ones DHL, Amazon and Google are using. We aren’t there yet,” she admits.