‘It's Not Mifepristone, But It's Not Poison’

In Poland almost all abortions are illegal and unavailable in the formal medical system. Networks of activists help people obtain abortion pills for secret use. I conducted research among medication abortion activists, abortion providers, abortion pill vendors, and abortion advocates in Poland and abroad, about anxieties that adhere to these pills. I learned that though activists source and provide the same pills used in settings where abortion is legal, pills in Poland's clandestine settings are mired as much in worries about fakeness as about prosecution. I make sense of this by showing how worries about fake pills in Poland speak less to the pharmaceutical properties of medicines than to the political, moral, legal, and geographical boundaries they cross as they circulate.