This article was updated on July 26, 2023 at 12:30 p.m.

KRAKOW — The arrest of a woman who legally took abortion pills in Poland has prompted protests outside of the police prefecture in Krakow, the latest in a series of events which has once again pushed the issue to the forefront of the country's politics. The crowd of demonstrators included the woman arrested — known only by her first name, Joanna — who identified the five officers at the front of the prefecture as the same ones who had put her under arrest.

"In that moment, I was no longer a person (to them)," Joanna told the crowd, in tears as she spoke about her arrest.

“The police asked me to undress, squat and cough," Joanna says in the report. “I undressed, but I didn’t take off my underwear, because I was still bleeding,” she said, calling the experience “humiliating.”

She was joined by Marta Lempart, the face of the "women's strike" movement that made headlines in 2020 as one of the largest protests in modern Polish history, second only to the Solidarity movement which led to the fall of the communist government in 1989. The movement took place after Poland's ruling party banned abortions in the case of fetal birth defects, which had accounted for one-third of legal pregnancy terminations in the country at the time.

Though the protests in Krakow, where the incident occurred, were the largest, demonstrations of solidarity also took place in other Polish cities, including Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan, and Rzeszow.

Poland's conservative government has made restricting abortion access a guiding pillar since returning to power in 2015. Now that appears to include orders to police to detain women seeking access to terminate a pregnancy in the case of health risks, one of the few exceptions to the strict national abortion bans in the country.

Last week, Joanna received mass media attention in Poland after police detained her, wrongfully claiming she had been pressured into having an abortion. She had purchased abortion pills on her own volition after health problems, and had decided to take them, which is not punishable in Poland.

But the state saw it differently, and Joanna was met at the hospital by four uniformed officers, as reported on Polish television program Fakty on TVN.

Poland has passed several measures in recent years to have arguably Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws. Increasingly, the crackdown even includes arrests when abortions are performed legally. Joanna is one of several women who have faced investigations, threats, and for some, even fatal health consequences, even as the law still allows abortion in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the mother is at risk

In March, the leader of the organization, activist Justyna Wydrzyńska, was found guilty of assisting abortions. The event marked “the first time in recent history in which a human rights defender in Europe has been prosecuted and convicted for assisting with access to abortion,” according to the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR).

About a month ago, Dorota, a 33-year old woman from Bochnia, a town in southern Poland, died after a Polish hospital refused to perform an abortion which would have saved her life. Both her and the child she was carrying were pronounced dead on the same day.

Dorota's death occurred right after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected a complaint by eight Polish women who argued that they were forced to carry their pregnancies to term despite severe fetal abnormalities. This is one of several thousand complaints Polish women have filed to the ECHR after a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal further restricted the country’s already stringent abortion rights.

As Poland continues enforcing its strict anti-abortion measures, even those who obtain the procedure legally worry that they may become targets.

Emergency contraceptive pills

Stephen Shaver / ZUMA