FEDERA brings SRHR to Open’er Festival in Poland
Throughout this year’s Open’er Festival, FEDERA and Ponton Group were present in the NGO Zone, creating a space for conversations about sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Being present at one of Poland’s largest music festivals allowed us to reach people outside traditional educational and healthcare settings. Reliable SRHR information should be available wherever people feel comfortable talking, asking questions and making informed decisions about their health and bodies.
Taking Pro-Choice Messages to Public Space
Thanks to the support of our community, FEDERA placed a pro-choice billboard near Gdańsk. The billboard display was accompanied by an information pop-up on federa.org.pl explaining the legal framework of abortion in Poland.
The campaign was created in response to the graphic and misleading banners displayed across Poland by anti-abortion organisations. Public space cannot be surrendered to anti-abortion manipulation. It must also contain reliable information about patients’ rights, access to safe abortion and the fact that a pregnant person is not criminally liable for ending their own pregnancy.
Under Polish law, abortion may be provided within the healthcare system when the pregnancy poses a threat to the pregnant person’s life or health, or when there is a justified suspicion that it resulted from a criminal act. A person may also end their own pregnancy using abortion pills or travel abroad for abortion care without facing criminal liability.
Making IUD Access Easier to Navigate
FEDERA published a new nationwide database of healthcare facilities that reported providing IUD insertion in 2025. The information was obtained from the Polish National Health Fund.
Both the insertion and removal of an IUD are guaranteed healthcare services financed under contracts with the National Health Fund. Patients should pay only for the device itself, not for the procedure. Despite this, FEDERA continues to receive reports of facilities refusing to provide the service or demanding additional payment.
The database is intended to help patients identify facilities that have reported performing IUD insertions and to make access to contraception more transparent in practice.
Exposing Anti-Rights Strategies Across Borders
FEDERA participated in the webinar “Learning from Poland: Understanding the Actors Shaping Family Values Narratives in Africa”, organised by the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA).
Experts from Poland and Africa discussed how narratives concerning so-called family values are used by anti-rights movements and what their growing influence may mean for the African human rights protection system.
FEDERA was represented by Mateusz Bieżuński, who presented the Polish experience of fundamentalist organisations seeking to restrict human rights and fundamental freedoms.
