RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – At the age of 21, Sara left the house she shares with her mother for her first plane trip. She did not tell her family the real reason why she took out a loan for 5,000 Brazilian reais ($ 1,000).
Two days later, a few hundred kilometers away, a 25-year-old woman packed her backpack in her one-bedroom apartment in Sao Paulo and left for the airport with her boyfriend.
Both women were heading to Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, in search of something banned in Brazil: an abortion.
“Having a child I don’t want and I don’t have the conditions to raise and being forced would be torture,” Sara told The Associated Press at Sao Paulo Airport as she prepared to sleep on a bench by the counter. check-in. the night before her connecting flight.
“What has helped me since I found out I was pregnant is that I have a chance. I have another alternative. That makes me feel safer, ”said the woman, who lives in the inner city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil and asked to use only her first name because of the stigma associated with abortion in Brazil.
Both women are part of a trend among Brazilian women without means who, in order to avoid risks and legal obstacles in the most populous country in Latin America, have requested abortions elsewhere in the region. They didn’t even need passports to enter Argentina, a Mercosur nation.
Their travels came just two weeks before the adoption, on December 30, of reference legislation legalizing abortion in Argentina. – the largest Latin American nation to do so. It highlights not only how Argentina’s progressive social policy differs from Brazil’s conservative one, but also the likelihood that more Brazilian women will request abortions in the neighboring nation.
“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 researcher in Latin American studies at Brown University, who studied abortion extensively. . in the region.
“More middle-class, working-class women connected to feminist groups now have access to something that has long been the story of rich women.”
Sara said she could not risk buying counterfeit abortion pills or undergoing a dangerous back-to-back procedure in Brazil. She feared injuries, death or failed abortion that led to complications. Being caught could even mean prison.
A protocol from the Argentine Ministry of Health provided legal freedom for Sara’s abortion on December 14, as long as she signed a statement citing the “health risk” posed by the pregnancy. 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 disease or infirmity.”
However, some doctors have refused abortions anyway, according to Dr. Viviana Mazur, who leads the sexual health group of the Argentine Federation of General Medicine. The new law allows abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy.
“The law will give more autonomy and dignity to women,” said Dr. Mazur. “So you don’t have to say ‘please’, ask for permission and no forgiveness.”
Before last week’s vote, Argentine feminist groups pressed for a long time for legalized abortion in Pope Francis’ homeland and found a common cause with President Alberto Fernández, who was elected in 2019 and introduced the bill.
The activists demonstrated in front of the Congress for weeks. Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who chaired the debate in a legislature in which more than 40% of parliamentarians are women, announced the adoption of the law. A crowd of several thousand outside burst into tears and hugs.
There was no echo in the Brazilian Congress, where about 15% of parliamentarians are women.
Brazilian law has remained virtually unchanged since 1940, allowing abortions only in cases of rape and endangering the life of a woman. A 2012 Supreme Court ruling also allowed abortions when the fetus has anencephaly. Since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, lawmakers have introduced at least 30 bills seeking to enforce laws, according to the Women in Congress watchdog.
Supported by conservatives and evangelicals, Bolsonaro said that if Congress legalized abortion, it would ban it. Following the adoption of Argentina’s bill, Bolsonaro said on Twitter that he would leave the children “subject to collection in their mother’s womb with the consent of the state.”
He named evangelical pastor Damares Alves, who said he opposes abortion even in rape, as a minister for women, families and human rights. After a 10-year-old girl was raped by her uncle and religious protesters besieged the hospital where she had an abortion in August, Alves said the fetus should have been born by cesarean section.
“We are working to provide an increasing level of attention and protection to our vulnerable pregnant women,” Alves said in a written response to AP questions. “No one will want to leave the Brazil we are building, let alone kill their children.”
Diniz, a researcher at Brown University, conducted a 2016 survey in Brazil, which found that one in five respondents had an abortion by the age of 40. Survey of 2,002 Brazilian women found higher abortion rates among those with less education and income.
In 2018, a health ministry official said the government estimated an estimated one million abortions a year, 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 and sensitized by the people in power “, said Diniz.
The Sao Paulo woman who traveled to Argentina for an abortion last month grew up in a slum in Rio de Janeiro, or favela, where she frequently saw unplanned pregnancies derail women’s lives, burdening them with responsibilities and making their careers even more difficult. or social mobility.
“It’s hard to get out of this reality,” she said.
He managed to leave the favela after getting a secure job and studying for a career in medicine. In doing so, she became “the pride of my parents,” said the woman, who called for her name not to be used because she feared the professional consequences and because abortion was illegal in Brazil.
Raised in a devoted evangelical family, the woman said having an abortion in Brazil means running both in connection with her God and national law. Of the two, she believed that God could forgive her, so she looked abroad.
In this way, she said, “no one will be able to accuse me of committing a crime.”
Both women turned for help to the Brazilian nonprofit Mile for Women’s Lives, founded by screenwriter Juliana Reis and Rebeca Mendes, who became a pioneer in 2017 when she publicly announced that she would travel outside Brazil for abortion. The group helped the first woman to travel abroad in November 2019, and another 59 followed by the end of last year. A total of 16 women left for Argentina in November and December.
It raises about 4,000 reais ($ 750) a month from crowdfunding and pays for travel costs 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 received about 1,500 requests for assistance, either in Brazil or abroad. Some asked about neighboring Uruguay without knowing that its 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 legalization, the group expects to offer more Brazilian women an accessible, safe and legal option at their doorstep. Reis said the group has 13 women heading to Argentina in January and expects trips there to become more mundane, especially from southern Brazil.
“Our operations have reached an intense level because many people believe that it is no longer tolerable to hide this in the closet and realize alternative solutions,” Reis said. “For me, this is the beginning of a change.”
After the abortion, Sara said in Buenos Aires that she was relieved and was even thinking of sharing the experience with her family.
“I know women who needed to have clandestine abortions,” she said. “In Brazil – and everywhere – there are women who need this support.”
___ Pollastri reported from Sao Paulo. Calatrava reported from Buenos Aires. Video journalist Yesica Brumec contributed from Buenos Aires.