Polish Activists Open the World’s First Parcel-Locker Machine for Abortion Pills

Abortomat by WHW and ABOTAK by Martyna Adamska CC BY 4.0 – 5 Women Help Women, an international abortion-support network, this week unveiled the Abortomat, which it describes as the world’s first parcel-locker machine for abortion pills. It stands inside AboTak, an abortion-support clinic that opened opposite the Polish parliament in the spring of 2025. The idea behind it is simple: make getting abortion pills closer to picking up an ordinary delivery. Poland has one of Europe’s densest networks of automated parcel lockers. More than 66,700 machines were operating across the country by the end of 2025 – roughly one for every 560 people – collecting clothes, books, groceries and whatever else people order online. “Parcel lockers are everywhere in Poland – people joke about our ‘paczkoza’, our obsession with them,” Kinga Jelinska, director of Women Help Women, told BIRN. “So why not use that same technology for abortion pills, where getting them to someone faster can actually matter?” The process involves a person contacting Women Help Women online and, after a consultation, receiving a six-digit code. That code opens one of 22 compartments containing the medication. The machine was designed by engineers and IT specialists commissioned by the organisation and, unlike commercial parcel lockers, does not store users’ personal data, Jelinska explained. “Sometimes even waiting a few days can be too long,” she said. “For people whose health is at risk, or who are further along in pregnancy, every day really matters.” In Poland, that wait exists partly because abortion care remains caught between a restrictive legal system and an extensive informal network built to work around it. Abortion is legal only when a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life or health, or results from a criminal act. Helping someone obtain an abortion outside those circumstances can be punishable by up to three years in prison under Article 152 of the criminal code. The pregnant person however is not criminally liable for ending their own pregnancy. Donald Tusk’s governing coalition came to power in 2023 promising to change the law, but reform has repeatedly stalled. A bill partially decriminalising assistance in abortion has remained in a special parliamentary committee since 2024. In the meantime, activists have filled much of the gap. Abortion Without Borders, a network of Polish and international groups, says it supported 38,508 abortions in 2025, making it the largest de facto abortion care provider in Poland. The Abortomat pushes that parallel system one step further – and tests the legal boundary surrounding it. “The person collecting the pills is not committing a crime, and the machine itself cannot be prosecuted,” Justyna Wydrzynska of Abortion Dream Team, the collective that runs the Warsaw clinic, said at the launch. Wydrzynska has personal experience of that boundary. In 2023, she was convicted of assisting an abortion after sending pills to a woman who had sought help during the Covid pandemic. An appeals court later overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial. Some lawyers are unconvinced that putting a machine between the activist and the person taking the pills changes much. “Assistance can cover a very broad range of actions,” criminal lawyer Pawel Matyja told Polish news outlet Zero.pl, arguing that sending the medication, arranging its collection and providing the access code could together still amount to assisting an abortion. “These are essentially a series of steps without which the woman would not be able to have the abortion.” For the time being, the Abortomat will remain indoors for security reasons, Jelinska said. She would much rather put it outside, but since AboTak opened, anti-abortion protesters have regularly gathered outside its entrance. Some demonstrations have involved loudspeakers and vuvuzelas, while the premises have also been targeted with butyric acid. “Our aim is to draw attention to an institution operating in the heart of the capital which, in our view, violates Polish law. We will continue protesting until it is closed,” Laura Lipinska of the Zycie i Rodzina Foundation, which participates in the protests, said in a statement after the centre opened in 2025. Despite the protests and legal uncertainty, the activists are pressing ahead. “If we worried about what might happen, or how people might react,” Jelinska said, “we wouldn’t have done anything for the past 12 years.”