RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – With her 21st birthday slowly approaching, Sara left the house she shares with her mother for her first plane trip. He did not explain to his family the real reason why he had taken out a loan for 5,000 Brazilian reais ($ 1,000).
Two days later, a few hundred miles away, a 25-year-old woman packed a backpack in her one-room apartment in Sao Paulo and left for the airport with her boyfriend.
Both women were going to the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, looking for something forbidden in Brazil: an abortion.
“Having a child I don’t want and who doesn’t have conditions to raise and who is forced to be tortured,” Sara told The Associated Press at Sao Paulo Airport as she prepared to sleep on a bench near the check-in counter. . the night before your connecting flight.
“What has helped me since I found out I was pregnant is that I have a chance. I still have an alternative. That makes me feel safer, ”said the woman, who lives in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte and called for only her first name to be used because of the stigma associated with abortion in Brazil.
Both women are part of a trend among Brazilian women without means who, to dodge risks and legal obstacles in the most populous country in Latin America, have sought abortions elsewhere in the region. They didn’t even need passports to enter Argentina, another Mercosur nation.
Her travels came just two weeks before the December 30 passage of the most important legislation legalizing abortion in Argentina – the largest Latin American nation that has ever done so. It highlights not only how Argentina’s progressive social policy diverges from Brazil’s conservative one, but also the likelihood that more Brazilian women will seek abortions in the neighboring nation.
“With changes in legislation in Latin America, 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 at Latin American studies at Brown University who has studied in depth the abortion in the region.
“There are more middle-class, working-class women connected to feminist groups who now have access to something that is basically the history of rich women for a long time.”
Sara said she could not risk buying counterfeit abortion pills or undergoing a dangerous back door procedure in Brazil. She feared injury, death, or a failed abortion that would lead to complications. Getting caught could even mean prison.
A protocol from the Argentine health ministry provided legal scope for Sara’s abortion on December 14, as long as she signed a statement citing the “health risk” that the pregnancy entailed. 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 illness.”
However, some doctors rejected the abortion anyway, according to Dr. Viviana Mazur, who heads the sexual health group of the Argentine Federation of General Medicine. The new law allows abortions until the 14th week of pregnancy.
“The law will give more autonomy and dignity to women,” Dr. Mazur said. “So they don’t have to say ‘please,’ ask for permission or forgiveness.”
Prior to last week’s vote, Argentine feminist groups had long pushed for legalized abortion in Pope Francis ’homeland and found a common cause with President Alberto Fernandez, who was elected in 2019 and presented the bill.
Activists demonstrated in Congress for weeks. Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who chaired the debate in a legislature where more than 40% of lawmakers are women, announced the passage of the law. A crowd of thousands outside shouted in applause and hugs.
There has been no echo in the Brazilian Congress, where about 15% of lawmakers are women.
Brazilian legislation has remained virtually unchanged since 1940, allowing abortion only in cases of rape and endangering the lives of women. A Supreme Court ruling in 2012 also allowed for abortion when the fetus has anencephaly. Since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, lawmakers have introduced at least 30 bills trying to toughen the laws, according to the watchdog Women in Congress.
With the support of conservatives and evangelicals, Bolsonaro has said that if Congress legalized abortion, it would veto. After Argentina’s bill was passed, Bolsonaro said on Twitter that he would leave the children “subject to being harvested in their mother’s womb with the consent of the state.”
She appointed evangelical pastor Damares Alves, who said she opposes abortion even in cases of rape, to be her minister of women, families and human rights. After a ten-year-old boy was raped by his uncle and religious protesters besieged the hospital where the abortion was performed in August, Alves said the fetus should have been delivered by cesarean section.
“We are working to provide an increasing level of care and protection to our pregnant women in situations of vulnerability,” Alves said in a written response to PA 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 that found that one in five respondents had an abortion at age 40. The survey of 2,002 Brazilian women they found higher abortion rates among those with less education and income.
In 2018, a health ministry official said the government estimated approximately one million abortions caused annually, with unsafe procedures that caused 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 men with power, ”said Diniz.
The Sao Paulo woman who traveled to Argentina to have an abortion last month grew up in a slum or favela in Rio de Janeiro, where she often saw unplanned pregnancies derail women’s lives, carrying them with responsibilities. and further hindering the professional career or social mobility. .
“It’s hard to get out of this reality,” he said.
He was able to leave the favela after getting a secure job and is studying for a career in a medical field. In doing so, she became “my parents’ pride,” said the woman, who called for her name not to be used because she feared the professional consequences and because abortion is illegal in Brazil. .
Raised in a devout evangelical family, the woman said having an abortion in Brazil meant confronting both her God and national law. Of both, she believed that God could forgive her, so she looked abroad.
That way, he said, “no one can accuse me of committing a crime.”
Both women appealed for help for non-profit Brazilian miles for women’s lives, founded by screenwriter Juliana Reis and Rebeca Mendes, who became a pioneer in 2017 when she publicly announced she would travel outside of Brazil to have an abortion. The group helped the first woman travel abroad in November 2019, and another 59 had followed late last year. The total includes 16 women who went to Argentina in November and December.
Reis raises about 4,000 reais ($ 750) a month from crowdfunding and pays the travel costs for a fifth of the women. Efforts are focused on providing moral support and helping women navigate unfamiliar countries and connect with clinics abroad.
The group has received about 1,500 requests for assistance, both in Brazil and abroad. Some asked about neighboring Uruguay without knowing that its law only applies to residents, Reyes said. The only other places in Latin America where abortion is legal they are Cuba, Guyana, French Guiana and parts of Mexico.
Now that Argentina has approved legalization, the group hopes to offer more Brazilian women a legal, safe and affordable option at home. Reis said the group has 13 women heading to Argentina in January and expects trips there to be more common, mostly from southern Brazil.
“Our operations have reached an intense level because a lot of people believe that it is no longer tolerable to keep hiding this in the closet and discover solutions,” Reis said. “For me, this is the beginning of a change.”
After the abortion, Sara told Buenos Aires that she was relieved and even contemplated sharing the experience with her family.
“I know women who have needed to have clandestine abortions,” he 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 collaborated from Buenos Aires.