RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – With her 21st birthday fast approaching, Sara leaves the house she shares with her mother for her first trip by plane. She did not tell her family the real reason why she took out a loan for 5,000 Brazilian ries ($ 1,000).
Two days later and a few hundred kilometers away, a 25-year-old woman packs a backpack in her one-bedroom Sao Paulo apartment and leaves for the airport with her boyfriend.
Both women were on their way to the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, in search of something forbidden in Brazil: an abortion.
“Having a child I do not want, and who has no conditions to raise, and if I have to, would be torture,” Sara told the Associated Press at Sao Paulo’s airport as she was ready to sleep on a bench near the check-in couch. the night before her connecting flight.
‘What has helped me since I discovered I was pregnant is that I have a chance. I still have an alternative. It makes me feel safer, ‘says the woman, who lives in the inland city of Belo Horizonte, asking that only her first name be used because of the stigma associated with abortion in Brazil.
Both women are part of a trend among Brazilian women without resources who, in order to evade risks and legal obstacles in the most populous country of Latin America, sought abortions elsewhere in the region. They did not even need passports to enter Argentina, a fellow Mercosur nation.
Their travels took place just two weeks before the passage of important legislation on December 30 to legalize abortion in Argentina – the largest Latin American country to have done so. It highlights not only how Argentina’s progressive social policies deviate from conservative policies in Brazil, but also the likelihood that more Brazilian women will seek abortions in the neighboring country.
“With the changes in Latin American legislation, women do not have to go to the U.S., they do not need a visa to have an abortion,” said Debora Diniz, a researcher on Latin American studies at the Brown- university, which has studied abortion extensively, said. in the region.
“More middle- and working-class women affiliated with feminist groups now have access to something that has basically been the story of rich women for a long time.”
Sara said she could not risk the possibility of buying counterfeit abortion pills or undergoing a dangerous back door procedure in Brazil. She was afraid of injuries, death or a failed abortion that resulted in complications. Getting caught can even mean jail time.
A protocol from the Argentine Ministry of Health gave legal space for Sara’s abortion on December 14, as long as she signed a statement citing the “health risk” that the pregnancy poses. The policy is based on the definition of the World Health Organization: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or weakness.”
According to Dr. Viviana Mazur, who heads the sexual health group of the Argentine Federation of General Medicine, some doctors have refused abortions anyway. The new law allows abortions until the 14th week of pregnancy.
“The law will give women more autonomy and dignity,” said Dr. Mazur said. “They therefore do not have to say ‘please’, nor may they ask for forgiveness. ‘
Before last week’s vote, Argentine feminist groups had long insisted on legal abortion in Pope Francis’ homeland, and they found a common cause with President Alberto Fernández, who was elected in 2019 and introduced the bill.
Activists demonstrated for weeks before Congress. Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who led the debate in a legislature where more than 40% of lawmakers are women, announced the adoption of the law. A crowd of several thousand outside bursts into cheers and tearful hugs.
There was no echo in the Congress of Brazil, where about 15% of legislators are women.
Brazilian law has remained virtually unchanged since 1940, allowing abortions only in case of rape and danger to the woman’s life. A Supreme Court ruling in 2012 also allowed abortions when the fetus had anencephaly. Since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, lawmakers have introduced at least thirty bills that tighten laws, according to the watchdog Women in Congress.
Supported by conservatives and evangelists, Bolsonaro said that if Congress legalizes abortion, he will veto it. After Argentina’s bill was approved, Bolsonaro said on Twitter that it would leave children “subject to being harvested in the womb of their mother with the consent of the state.”
He named evangelical pastor Damares Alves, who said he opposed his abortion, even in cases of rape, as his minister of women, families and human rights. After a ten-year-old was raped by her uncle and religious protesters besieged the hospital where her abortion was performed in August, Alves said the fetus had to be born by caesarean section.
“We are working to provide growing attention and protection to our pregnant women in vulnerable situations,” Alves said in a written response to AP questions. “Nobody wants to leave the Brazil we are building, let alone kill their children.”
Diniz, the University of Brown researcher, conducted a 2016 survey in Brazil which found that one in five respondents had an abortion by the age of 40 years. In the survey among 2,002 Brazilian women, higher abortions were shown among those with less education and income.
In 2018, a health ministry official said the government causes about 1 million abortions annually, with unsafe procedures causing more than 250,000 hospitalizations and 200 deaths.
‘Abortion is a common experience in a woman’s life. “But at the same time, it is a sensitive political issue that is being made sensitive by men in power,” Diniz said.
The Sao Paulo woman, who traveled to Argentina last month for an abortion, grew up in a slum in Rio de Janeiro, or favela, where she regularly saw unplanned pregnancies ruining women’s lives, and they burdened with responsibilities and make it even more difficult to have careers or social mobility.
“It’s hard to get out of reality,” she said.
She was able to leave the favela after finding a secure job and studying for a career in a medical field. In doing so, she ‘became the pride of my parents’, the woman said, asking that her name not be used because she fears professional consequences and because abortion is illegal in Brazil.
The woman was raised in a devout evangelical family and said that an abortion in Brazil means that it is a violation of both her God and national law. Of the two, she believed that God could forgive her, and so she looked abroad.
In this way, she said, “no one will be able to accuse me of committing a crime.”
Both women sought help for the Brazilian Miles for Women’s Nonprofit, founded by screenwriter Juliana Reis and Rebeca Mendes, who became a pioneer in 2017 when she publicly announced she would travel outside Brazil for an abortion. . The group helped the first woman to travel abroad in November 2019, and another 59 followed late last year. The total includes 16 women who went to Argentina in November and December.
It increases about 4,000 reais ($ 750) monthly through crowdfunding and pays travel expenses for about a fifth of the women, Reis said. The efforts are focused on providing moral support and helping women navigate in the unknown countries and make contact with clinics abroad.
The group received about 1,500 requests for help, either in Brazil or abroad. Some have asked about neighboring Uruguay without knowing that the law only applies to residents, Reis said. The only other places in Latin America where abortion is legal are Cuba, Guyana, French Guiana and parts of Mexico.
Now that Argentina has approved the legalization, the group expects to offer more Brazilian women an affordable, safe and legal option in front of their door. Travel said the group has 13 women going to Argentina in January, and she expects travel there to become more common, especially from southern Brazil.
“Our operations have reached an intense level because many people believe that it is no longer acceptable to hide them in the closet and determine solutions,” Reis said. “For me, this is the beginning of a change.”
After her abortion, Sara said in Buenos Aires that she feels relieved and is even considering sharing the experience with her family.
“I know women who have had to do clandestine abortions,” she said. “In Brazil – and everywhere – there are women who need this support.”
___ Pollastri reported from Sao Paulo. Calatrava reports from Buenos Aires. Video journalist Yesica Brumec made a contribution from Buenos Aires.