As Donald Trump faces his second impeachment trial this week, women in Poland are being called in increasing numbers to police stations – accused of accessing medical abortions online, in a country with one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws. These prosecutions, an ocean apart, are not unrelated. Until recently, the chief counsel of an ultra-conservative group that argued for further restricting Polish abortion laws was one of the former US president’s personal lawyers.
That group, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), is one of several Trump-linked US organisations that have spent millions of dollars around the world pushing ‘traditional family’ policies. Its chief counsel is Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers during his first impeachment challenge. The group’s European office provided legal arguments in support of banning abortion in Poland in cases of severe foetal anomalies – and it has opposed marriage equality including in Italy.
The results of these campaigns have been severe for many women and LGBT people across the continent. “Terrible consequences” of Poland’s increased abortion restrictions will include “the broken hearts of mothers who are forced to continue such pregnancies and watch their children die”, one woman in Warsaw, told openDemocracy last year. She had ended her own pregnancy, shortly before the ban came in, after receiving a diagnosis of a usually fatal foetal anomaly.
