RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – With her 21st birthday approaching, Sara left the house she shares with her mother for the first plane trip. She did not tell the family the real reason she took out a loan for 5,000 reais ($ 1,000).
Two days later, hundreds of kilometers away, a 25-year-old woman put a backpack in her one-bedroom apartment in São Paulo and went to the airport with her boyfriend.
The two women were going to the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, in search of something prohibited in Brazil: an abortion.
“Having a child that I don’t want and can’t afford to raise and be obliged to would be torture,” Sara told the Associated Press at São Paulo airport as she prepared to sleep on a bench near the check-in counter the night before. connecting flight.
“What has helped me since I found out I was pregnant is that I have a chance. I still have an alternative. It makes me feel more secure, ”said the woman, who lives in the city of Belo Horizonte, in the interior of Brazil, and asked that only the first name be mentioned because of the stigma associated with abortion in Brazil.
The two women are part of a trend among Brazilians without means who, in order to avoid the risks and legal obstacles in the most populous country in Latin America, seek abortion in other parts of the region. They didn’t even need a passport to enter Argentina, Mercosur’s country.
His travels took place just two weeks before the passage, on December 30, of historic legislation that legalizes abortion in Argentina – the largest Latin American nation to do so. He highlights not only how Argentina’s progressive social policy diverges from Brazil’s conservative, but also the likelihood that more Brazilian women will seek abortion in the neighboring country.
“With changes in Latin American legislation, women do not need to go to the United States, they do not need a visa to have an abortion,” said Debora Diniz, a Latin American studies researcher at Brown University who has studied abortion extensively in the region.
“More working and middle class women linked to feminist groups are now having access to something that is basically the story of wealthy women for a long time.”
Sara said she could not risk the possibility of buying fake abortion pills or undergoing a dangerous secret procedure in Brazil. She feared injury, death or an unsuccessful abortion resulting in complications. Getting caught can even mean imprisonment.
A protocol from the Argentine Ministry of Health provided legal leeway for Sara’s abortion on December 14, as long as she signed a statement citing the “health risk” that pregnancy posed. The policy was based on the World Health Organization’s definition of health: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not just the absence of illness or infirmity”.
Even so, some doctors refused abortion, according to Dr. Viviana Mazur, who heads the sexual health group at the Argentine Federation of General Medicine. The new law allows abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy.
“The law will give women more autonomy and dignity,” said Mazur. “So that they don’t have to say ‘please’, ask permission or forgiveness.”
Before last week’s vote, Argentine feminist groups had long been pushing for the legalization of abortion in Pope Francis’ homeland and found a common cause with President Alberto Fernández, elected in 2019 and presented the project.
Activists protested in front of Congress for weeks. Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who chaired the debate in a legislature where more than 40% of parliamentarians are women, announced the passage of the law. A crowd of several thousand outside burst into tears and tearful hugs.
There was no echo in the Brazilian Congress, where about 15% of parliamentarians are women.
Brazilian law has remained largely unchanged since 1940, allowing abortion only in cases of rape and danger to the woman’s life. A Supreme Court decision in 2012 also allowed abortion when the fetus had anencephaly. Since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, lawmakers have tabled at least 30 bills to tighten laws, according to Women in Congress.
Supported by conservatives and evangelicals, Bolsonaro said that if Congress legalized abortion, he would veto. After the Argentine bill was approved, Bolsonaro said on Twitter that it would make children “subject to be harvested in the womb of their mothers with the state’s consent.”
He appointed evangelical pastor Damares Alves, who said he opposed abortion even in cases of rape, to be his minister for women, family and human rights. After a 10-year-old girl was raped by her uncle and religious protesters surrounded the hospital where her abortion was performed in August, Alves said the fetus should have been born by caesarean section.
“We are working to provide an increasing level of care and protection for our pregnant women in vulnerable situations,” said Alves in a written response to the AP’s questions. “Nobody will want to leave the Brazil we are building, much less kill their children.”
Diniz, the researcher at Brown University, conducted a 2016 survey in Brazil that found that one in five respondents had an abortion at age 40. The survey of 2,002 Brazilian women found higher rates of abortion among those with less education and income.
In 2018, a health ministry official said the government estimated about 1 million induced 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 delicate political issue and sensitized by men in power, ”said Diniz.
The São Paulo woman who traveled to Argentina to have an abortion last month grew up in a slum in Rio de Janeiro, where she often saw unplanned pregnancies disrupting women’s lives, overloading them with responsibilities and making it even more difficult to have a career or social mobility. .
“It is difficult to get out of this reality,” she said.
She managed to leave the favela after getting a secure job and is studying for a career in the medical field. In doing so, she became “the pride of my parents,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be divulged because she feared professional consequences and because abortion is illegal in Brazil.
Raised in a devout evangelical family, the woman said that having an abortion in Brazil meant coming into conflict with her God and national law. Of the two, she believed that God could forgive her, so she looked outside.
So, she said, “no one can accuse me of committing a crime.”
The two turned to the Brazilian non-profit organization Miles for Women’s Lives, founded by screenwriters Juliana Reis and Rebeca Mendes, who became a pioneer in 2017 when she publicly announced that she would travel outside Brazil to have an abortion. The group helped the first woman to travel abroad in November 2019, and another 59 had followed by the end of last year. The total includes 16 women who went to Argentina in November and December.
She raises about 4,000 reais ($ 750) a month with crowdfunding and pays travel expenses for about a fifth of women, Reis said. Efforts are focused on providing moral support and helping women navigate unknown countries and connect with clinics abroad.
The group has already received around 1,500 requests for assistance, either in Brazil or abroad. Some asked about neighboring Uruguay without knowing that their law applies only 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 hopes to offer more Brazilian women an affordable, safe and legal option at their doorstep. Reis said the group has 13 women going to Argentina in January, and she expects trips 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 tolerable to hide it in the closet and discover alternative solutions,” said Reis. “For me, this is the beginning of a change.”
After the abortion, Sara said in Buenos Aires that she felt relieved and even thought about sharing the experience with her family.
“I know women who had to have clandestine abortions,” she said. “In Brazil – and everywhere – there are women who need this support.”
___ Pollastri reported from São Paulo. Calatrava reported from Buenos Aires. Videojournalist Yesica Brumec contributed from Buenos Aires.