Over 50,000 women in Poland seek out 'underground' abortions each year. The nonprofit Women On Waves is using drones to give those women a safe alternative.
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Criminalizing abortion has dire consequences. That is why Dutch Physician Rebecca Gomperts founded Women on Waves in 1999, a non-profit organization whose mission is to prevent self-administered abortions, as well as unwanted pregnancies, in countries with strict abortion laws. The organization has literally taken to international waters to offer medical abortions to women who would otherwise be deemed criminals for undergoing an abortion or have to live with an unwanted pregnancy. Now the organization has also taken to the air to deliver abortion pills.
Women on Waves
The delivery drone has been dubbed by some a “drone of death.” The drone took flight from the town of Frankfurt an der Oder and crossed the River Oder to deliver the abortion pills to two women who were waiting on the Polish border, reported BBC News June 27. The two Polish women took the pills immediately after the drone landed.
In an online statement, Women on Waves noted that there were no anti-abortion protesters at the site of the drop. Police tried to intervene but the drop was successful. The women who took the pills that were taped to the side of the drone, swallowed the pills before police could stop them.
German police did confiscate drone controllers and personal iPads from drone pilots. They have pressed criminal charges but on what grounds, is unclear. Women on Waves writes that “The medicines were provided on prescription by a doctor and both Poland and Germany are part of Schengen" an area of 26 European countries which have collectively decided to eliminate passport and immigration controls over their borders.
According to Women on Waves, anti-abortion laws are a social injustice. Restrictive abortion laws like the ones in Poland violate international human rights agreements including the right to health. Under Poland’s restrictive laws, which permit abortions only in cases of rape, incest, in cases of irreversible foetal malformation and when the birth could prove fatal to the mother, some women undertake “risky back-street abortions” which could be administered unhygienically by untrained practitioners and could cause chronic and irreversible health problems and even kill the women receiving the abortion.
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