“She was very Catholic”

I know you want one story. A story of our own, right? But let me tell you this second one, too. I don’t know if you remember that I talked about this very close friend who had helped me. And I told you that I’d lost someone very important for me. And this is the story of this friend of mine. She died, because of an abortion. I think her story should be told. I have to tell this. Let me tell you this second story, please. It is also mine, isn’t it?

I wasn’t there during her abortion. We were in a fight; we weren’t even talking. You know how it is when families fight. But I had a dream about her. You might not believe me, but I did. So, I decided to call her, even if we were in a fight. I insisted, and I called her while she was taking the Cytotec. I didn’t know, but she was already bleeding. And she didn’t tell me a thing. I insisted; I even tried to go see her the following days. She wasn’t in a good mood when she picked up the phone. She was very Catholic. She was one of those people who even had a bumper sticker, you know. A pro-life sticker. I think it said, “Brazil without abortion”; it was a big one. She had helped me before. Then she turned more and more to that side of the Church. I have to highlight: all our families are Catholic, but this friend of mine was the most Catholic of us.

What happened is that, on the day I reached out to her, she was already bleeding. The Cytotec was already working and I can only imagine her pain. It was painful for everything she believed in, along with the physical pain, and she was all alone. She went to the hospital to the curettage and then went back. I didn’t know anything. Everything I’m telling you, I only found out later on at the time. She was my son’s godmother and I’m her son’s godmother.

Two days after she got back home, she had a fever and then went back to the hospital. In a week, she was dead. Dead. Can you believe it? She died because of an abortion. During her funeral, no one talked about it. The family asked for the cause of death to be pneumonia and sepsis. During the funeral we talked about… nothing. We communicated with one another using gestures.

“There are four stories that I’d like to tell you. Some of them are mine, some of them are about women I’ve helped. I will tell you one of them today, but, first, I want to say what made me talk about it. I’ve just lost a very important person for me, someone I loved and who was part of all those stories.

I was pregnant. The father was the same man who is now the father of my two kids. The person who helped me was this friend of mine. I bought some Cytotec. I took some pills and put some others inside, and it didn’t work. Then I bought it a second time, from another source, at a local street market. My friend helped me again and it didn’t work either. I took a higher dose the second time and it still didn’t work. In the end, I looked for a doctor and told him I had taken Cytotec twice. He instantly changed his facial expression. I remember he stayed there with his arms crossed. He didn’t want to talk to me and said he wouldn’t help me at all. When I was leaving, almost at the door, he told me he had the number of someone who could help. But he couldn’t help me, he said.

I didn’t know where I was going or who was going to see me. When I got there, a woman just gave me an injection with a syringe, you know? It was a very big one, with a yellow liquid. It was a sticky, dark yellow liquid. The second she injected that liquid in my vagina, or my uterus, I started bleeding. I was in a lot, a lot of pain. I was very scared. This woman shouted at me, “you can’t go to the hospital, you have to cope with the pain.” Of course, I didn’t do what she said. I went to the hospital right away.

It was all over after I went to the hospital. They sorted it out, you can imagine how. What I wanted to tell you is this: many years later, I went to the same public hospital that I’d gone to at that time. I went to see an otolaryngologist. He was reading my medical record and said, “oh, you’ve done an abortion”. That left me speechless. That was a huge surprise for me. It was shocking for me to see that it was written there, years later. That record about my past still exists.”

“I am 56. I have decided to record my story for you. I just need some privacy, because I haven’t told this to my daughters yet. I will. I’d just prefer to do this first and tell them afterwards. Telling them is something else; it’s different from talking to you today. It happened in 1979. I was 18. I met a guy from Rio de Janeiro. He was in my town for a short period. I was very needy back then, so I would think of anything I had with anyone as a serious relationship.

Suddenly, I was pregnant. I made a long-distance call to talk to him. I don’t know if you remember, but those were very expensive and difficult to make. He went straight to the point. I talked to him and he answered: “if you want to have it, it’s our problem…” no, no, no. This is not how it was. You know what he said? It looks like I’m getting confused here, right? He said: “if you want an abortion, the problem is ours; if you want to have it, it’s only yours”. I know it can be appalling. We would imagine men saying, “I’ll take on this child,” but no, no, no. No wonder I was mistaken… after three daughters and now having a good husband. That’s right, in fact, he said the exact opposite. “If you want an abortion, the problem is ours; if you want to have it, it’s only yours.”

I think I had never thought about abortion before. It had never even crossed my mind. As I said, I was very young, but I also knew that I couldn’t have that child by myself. I spoke to a friend of the family who was 14 years older than me — another long-distance call. She said: “look, you have a choice, it’s this: it has been done here in my town, you can come, I’ll help you.” These two conversations I had on the phone were different: one of them was supportive and the other was supporting me while abandoning me at the same time. But they made me decide: the pregnancy was a problem. I was about to take university entrance exams, so I waited until I was approved and then I went to my friend’s town. I was happy; I keep thinking about those feelings I had, that euphoria. Later on, when I was pregnant with my daughters, I studied about it and understood the hormonal process I was going through. I was going through a difficult situation, but I was still happy about it.

Well, the guy gave me the money and this friend took me to the clinic. The place was named after a saint. I’m not kidding, it really was. We even got a keychain on our way out that said “come back anytime.” It sounds like a joke, right? The clinic was neat. It even had a sign, it wasn’t hidden. Everyone knew what happened in there. There were a lot of women. My friend stayed in the waiting room as I got in. I took off my clothes to put on the surgical clothing in a place where other women were waiting too. I recognized some women I knew from the beach where I used to vacation and from places I used to visit. One woman was very emotional, crying. I calmed her down. I don’t even know if those women remember each other from that moment.

I kept seeing those women coming and going. Some who had arrived after me went in before I did. I was very calm and just waited there. Then they finally called my name. I remember seeing a very tall doctor and another one, I think he was the anesthetist. There were other people in the room, all of them wearing masks — medical, surgical masks. I woke up in a bigger room, lying down on a mat on the floor. There were many other women like this. As soon as I woke up, I saw someone being carried and then put beside me, on another mat. One of them woke up very agitated. I saw a little bit of everything there. Then I put my clothes back on and I was told that I had a tampon in my vagina. They gave me the keychain and I left.

My friend had to travel somewhere, so I was alone in her apartment. That was when I took the tampon out. I was frightened by what came from inside of me. No one had told me that it was a 1-meter tampon. While I was taking it out, it seemed like it was never over. I was desperate in that moment. I thought about it a lot afterwards. I worked it out using daime*, I had other children — my daughters — and I moved on. Today, I describe myself as someone who turned into a girl with a secret. I still am this girl with a secret. I think I forgave myself, even if I don’t believe in sinning. But I think that this cycle will only close after I tell my daughters this story.”

*Santo Daime is a religious movement that has its origin in the Amazon Forest of Brazil, in the first decades of the 20th century by Professor Irineu. The doctrine is Christian and eclectic, bringing together Catholic, Spiritist, esoteric, African and indigenous traditions and uses ayahuasca tea from its rites.

“I was 15 when I had my first abortion. It was the beginning of a relationship and I
didn’t want any children. Even then, I already knew I didn’t want to be a mother. I still don’t. He was much older, and he had two kids. Our relationship was complicated, but I was very much in love with him. When I found out I was pregnant, I told him right away. He was quick to tell me that he didn’t want more children; that he didn’t have a job; that he couldn’t even afford child support for his other kids. Actually, he had always told me that he did pay for it. Later I heard about the fact that he didn’t even do that. He didn’t even pay child support for the kids from his previous relationship.

I was the one who mentioned abortion first, and he just called me a slut. He said no; at the same time, he kept saying he didn’t want to have that child with me. A few days later, he showed up at my place with some Cytotec pills. I lived with my mother. He gave me the pills. Before that, I didn’t eat or drink anything for two days, not even water. I can’t remember if it was him or if it was some other people, but someone told me that I should be very weak for the pills to work well.

So, I took three pills and put three more in my vagina. Right after that, I felt very
sleepy. Then I woke up bleeding a lot. He was with me in the bedroom. It was hard for me to go to the bathroom and pee. I kept going and I couldn’t do it. I started to feel a lot of pain. It started in the afternoon. In the evening, I couldn’t stand the pain and I still couldn’t pee. So, I decided to put my hand inside my vagina. I felt like it was swollen, like there was something in it. I took something out with my own hand, like a golf ball. I didn’t know what that was. I squatted and I pushed until I could get it out. I put it in a plastic bag and then threw it on a
wasteland.

I thought it was ok. I thought it had ended, I admit. Then I started to feel something that I think was guilt. I kept thinking about it. I had nightmares of deformed children calling me mom, mommy, or asking me why I did that. I was still in my relationship. It was an abusive one, really. He used to beat me. We had violent fights and he was jealous of everything and everyone. He told me to stop taking contraceptives. He said that, as long as I was on the pill, I could cheat on him whenever he wasn’t there with me.

One day, while I wasn’t on the pill, I knew I was fertile. I didn’t want a relationship
with him anymore. He threatened to beat me and made me have sex with him. That was when I got pregnant for the second time. I was 18 and I knew there was no future for us, considering everything I had lived and was living with this violent man. The nightmares were gone. I knew I didn’t want a child with him.

I took a loan in my mother’s name and bought the pills again. Unlike that first time, I didn’t feel guilty. And I did it all by myself. You know, now that I am telling you all of this, I’d say I didn’t feel guilty that first time either. I had those horrible nightmares and it seems like I was trying to settle in the middle of everything. But it wasn’t guilt. Maybe it was the burden of everything I had lived and was living with that guy. And fear of violence. I didn’t want a man like that to be the father of my children. We broke up and he never found out about the second
abortion.”

“I don’t know how I should do it — If I should record it or write it. You will have to be patient with the way I write on WhatsApp, line by line. I would like you to tell my story line by line, too, as I write it. It was 1992. I can’t send a voice message, because I don’t want anyone to hear this. I really want to participate. But this is my condition. I want you to tell my story line by line.

When I was 18, I had a child. It was my first pregnancy. I hadn’t planned it and I didn’t want it. But I couldn’t have na abortion. Although I had thought about it, I didn’t have the chance. I suffered retaliation for being young and single at the time I got pregnant. I struggled, it wasn’t easy. In 2 years, I got pregnant again. I didn’t know anything. I was dating a guy who was helping me raise my first child. We had no stability, neither financial nor emotional. My menstruation was late, but that was normal. I’d go days without taking the pill. In this mess, I got pregnant.

It was my second pregnancy. No one would forgive me. I was still a student. My partner told his mother. She helped us by giving me some teas. She had already had abortions and she knew where to begin. There are beliefs involving teas and bitter drinks. She said it would work, but it didn’t. Then I took some medicine from the drugstore, I don’t know its name. I got it at the neighborhood drugstore, from a man. It didn’t work either. My mother-in-law took me to a lady who performed abortions. The woman was a retired nursing assistant. She had worked with a doctor who performed abortions. She introduced a kind of rubber band in my vagina and told me to come back in 24 hours or whenever I started to bleed.

It was a very modest house. There were other women, probably for the same reason as me. I went to a bedroom to lay down. She did the procedure with that rubber inside of me. I didn’t even pay attention if she washed her hands. We went home by bus and that thing started to hurt. Her job was to start the abortion. I had to go somewhere else to finish it. The cramps were getting worse, but there was no bleeding.

At night, in the bathroom, a viscous liquid came out. I thought it was over and I never went back to the woman. I started to have a lot of fever and bleeding. My sister and my mother started to suspect. I was taken to the maternity hospital. I was very badly treated there. I kept lying, as my mother-in-law and the nurse had told me. The hospital looked like a police station. I stayed there for several days; four, I think. All the cases were passing in front of me. They wanted to punish me. There was this liquid, as dark as coffee, that stank a lot. One of the people at the hospital said: “this one is an abortionist; she will get here every year”. I freaked out and cried compulsively. I asked to die at home. They couldn’t discharge me, because I was there without having eaten anything for an entire day. They asked me to be patient and said the medical team had more urgent cases than mine. They told me my case was mild, but If I left, I could die.

I was hungry, humiliated and upset. I left the next day. They did the procedure and I walked away. I didn’t tell anyone that. It was self-punishment for killing. Do you believe that? I assimilated the lesson. I only managed to talk about it 12 years later, during my son’s prenatal care. Then I met other women with the same story as mine. Now, more women are going to know my story, which can be just like theirs.”

“I was 27 and I had a daughter who was 4. I was in a relationship with a guy who was very kind, he was nice. We were friends before we started dating. I can guarantee you we did everything right. I am living proof that contraception can fail.

I got pregnant. We quickly looked for one of the well-known abortion clinics, but it was closed. The police had been there, so it was shut down. They recommended us another clinic, one that I knew nothing about besides a friend having told me it was an option. She said something about a cousin and that things could work out fine if I went there. I got a bit insecure, but I could not have another child at that moment, when I already had a 4-year-old. I decided to give it a try. But I have to say I was very, very scared.

We saved money — I don’t even know how — and scheduled the procedure. They treated me well. I felt no pain during it or afterwards. Then I went home. It looked like everything had worked out fine. I was resting for two days and then got back to normal. Exactly a month later, I started to have some kind of bleeding, more or less like menstruation, but different. It quickly turned into hemorrhage. There was blood everywhere. If I was standing up, a pool of blood would appear on the floor. I went to the shower, and blood clots were coming out. It was a lot of blood.

They did not do curettage at the clinic I had gone to. And they had this one rule: you could not go back there. It was different from the other clinics, where you’d go out with the doctor’s number or with some guidelines of what to do if something went wrong. I was on my own. My boyfriend at the time knew a nurse who worked at a university hospital and she got me an appointment. No tampon was enough to hold my bleeding at that moment. I was afraid I would die. I was afraid I would be arrested. I saw myself disappearing with that bleeding.

I can tell you I had three feelings: fear, fear, and fear. I trembled. I started to feel pain, so much worse than menstrual cramps. There was no emergency room, so my bed was at the corner of the hallway. A forgotten corner. It was strategic. No one would see me or take care of me, so I was forgotten. I gave them my personal information and that was the first of three nights I was hospitalized.

During the first three days, no one had me examined, no one talked to me, no one got close to me. The resident doctors would pass through me, and I heard them speaking, referring to me as “the abortionist”. Those were very difficult times, and I even heard this dialog: a woman was asking another one “who’s that in the corner?”. “She had an abortion. She is there to think of what she’s done, to erase what she’s done.” It was a woman’s voice judging me, you know. Hearing it from another woman was particularly painful. That is when I started to panic.

At the end of the fourth day, they examined me and then did the curettage. Only after that, I was discharged. I got out of the hospital walking that day. At that moment, I became a feminist. Now I fight for abortion rights. And do you know who turned me into this person?They did this to me. I was lucky I  survived. But I learned what it means to resist. And that is what I have been doing ever since. It is what I am doing here, once again.”

When I was 15, I started dating someone. I used to live in a small town. My father had just died, and I came from a very conservative family, even more than that, I would say, my mother was a very authoritarian woman. I hate to say this, but, with my father’s death, it was like I was able to know the world and begin to live.

I think I liked the boy, it’s very hard to go back in time and say what was all that,
because now it all seems like a teenage fascination. I had all that excitement of someone discovering life. We had been dating for a while when I lost my virginity. At 16, I got pregnant, but before that we had a memorable talk, even before I knew I was pregnant and went to talk to him, and I kept thinking about it. One day, he had asked me, “what do you think about abortions? Would you do it?”. I had never thought about it before, I’m 41 years old now, a much more mature woman, and I’ve lived more and I’ve known women, abortion stories. But
at that time, at 16, it was all very new to me.

When I got pregnant, I didn’t even have to ask his opinion, it had been already settled in that talk we had had and that I couldn’t forget. He made me take a urine analysis, he took my urine to the lab, he took my sister-in-law’s document to have access to health insurance. We did everything in secret. When the result came and it was positive, he didn’t even ask my opinion, there was no discussion. He said “I can’t take this responsibility, I won’t, I have no conditions, you will have the abortion”. I would say it was not a choice at that moment, it
was an order. I didn’t have his support or society’s support to say I would be a single mother in a small town, at 16, and without a father. He even said, like he was threatening me, that my mother and my brother would leave me, would kick me out — I wouldn’t have anyone’s help, only judging, that is.

This created a lot of internal conflict, of course, I had no one to talk to. I talked to a cousin, but she was kind of silly, she was my age and didn’t really help me. The guy gave me some kinds of tea, he gave me pills and nothing, then he got Cytotec, he spent a lot of money to get it and settled the time and date for us to meet and have the abortion. I can’t lie, while I waited him to sort it all out, I was already dreaming about the baby. You know when you start daydreaming? It was me. I thought he was going to change his mind, would appear in front of
me as a hero and say, “we will take this responsibility together, it will be alright”.

I went to his place, took the pills, and he was beside me, watching the whole abortion process. It hurt, it hurt a lot. The beliefs and the taboo around me, it was a pain that I could say I felt in my soul. It was a lot of bleeding and I did not go to the hospital. For some time, I blamed myself, I punished myself, I thought I was the one and only person responsible for that. I couldn’t open up with anyone, how could I tell someone that I am a criminal? I didn’t want to go to jail. I have tried to talk about this before, two or three times, but the disapproving
looks made me quail and not say anything.

At 21 I got married, and it was only in my second pregnancy that I could put things in their places in this story, during my prenatal care exams, talking to a nurse. I understood that it was something I had to go through, or that I let myself go through. When I told this story and when I talk about it again now, I can tell you that I do not regret it. People ask right away “do you regret it?”. It seems to be the first question that arises. No, I do not have any regrets, that’s not it. What I still have is the feeling of loneliness that I had, and that’s why today I’m empathic with all women who go through this. You know, it’s very ironic, this empathy came into my house so I could be empathic with my daughter.

My oldest daughter, 16, got pregnant and the father’s family is very religious,
evangelical. She came to ask me, I told my story, she was surprised. I told her I would be there for her whatever her decision was, either to have the abortion or the child. She decided to keep it. Now I have a grandson, 2 years and 10 months old. We are a wonderful family, my daughter, my grandson, my other daughter, we are four and at that time I also told my youngest daughter. Both of them are, like their father, very evangelical, but I think they look at the subject
of abortion in a different way nowadays, different from what the Church says. It says it’s a sin and that women should go to jail. When this is spoken about, I am sure they remember me, their mother.

I have my story. It’s very different from the one my sister has gone through,
because she lives abroad. She had an abortion at a public hospital, I had 4 abortions in Brazil, all illegal. All of them were humiliating, painful, and lonely. I had no partner, like now. I won’t tell you about all of them. I’ve spent the whole day practicing this recording, thinking how I would tell you. And all that came to me was forgiveness, prison, guilt. I’ll be able to tell you if I talk about all of them at once. And if I’m fast.

I wanted to tell these stories as if they made me proud. But they don’t. They
never do, to anyone. Condoms break, the guys won’t use them, we forget the pill, or the pill doesn’t work. It’s not bad luck or a lie, it’s real life. I’ve had 4 abortions and in none of them I had my partners’ hands to hold. I always went alone, they are cowards, liars, sexists. I have two beautiful daughters, wonderful, because I wanted them. It’s hard to speak now, but I want to leave an alert: I want to and I need to be heard.

I’m 54 years old, I have a boyfriend now, but it all seems false. If I still could
get pregnant or go through this, it would be a fifth story of abandon. What do the 4 stories have in common? In all of them I had to solve it all by myself, in any of them I was cared for so it wouldn’t happen again, in all of them what was wrong in my personal and sexual life continued to be wrong. If I suffered any violence, I couldn’t speak to the doctors. If I didn’t use a certain [contraceptive] method, I couldn’t say it in the hospital.

I’ve said I wouldn’t talk about each of them. And I won’t, I’ll just tell something unforgettable about these abortions. It’s a tragic story. I went to a hospital whose doctor was evangelical. When I was about to receive the anesthesia, I
remember him asking me: “do you like to travel? You’re about to have a trip now”. I don’t know what he gave me, but I had hallucinations, it was like I was being amputated. It was a horrible experience.

The illegality made me go through 4 abortions. I’m a graduated woman, I
work, I’m well-informed. Whatever I was doing wrong, I kept doing it wrong. This is what I wanted to talk about: if the abortion wasn’t prohibited, we would be able to take care of women like me, so they wouldn’t go through so many experiences like these. That is why I came here to speak. One or four abortions, it’s all the same: it’s a very bad experience in illegality.

Can I tell the story the way I want to or is there a certain way of doing it? Will
you ask me questions, or can I just keep talking? It feels weird to tell this story after so many years. I have tried before, but then I see how unorganized everything is in my head. It seems so jumbled, you know?

I was 17. He was older, well-known, kind of famous, and we had a sick
relationship of possessiveness and jealousy. My father had just died, and I was raised in an overprotective environment. I’ve never taken a bus, I’m 43 now and I recently told my husband: “I need to have this experience”. My father gave me a car early in my life and then suddenly died.

This boyfriend was an aggressive guy. We had an abusive relationship. Breaking up with him was like getting cancer out of me. He repeated this abusive behavior with other women. But I ended up getting pregnant. My mother had just become a widow, with three teenage daughters, and all I could think was how to give my mother the news during our grief. I’ve always had a strong personality. By the time he passed away, we had just had a fight. I wanted to live, smoke, dance, and he wanted me to stay home. It was after his death that I started dating this older guy.

It might have nothing to do with the story, but I want to say this. Before he died,
while he was already sick, I told him, “I want to go”, and he said “no, because I’m sick”. I replied: “then I wish you die soon, so I can live”. And he actually did. I felt terrible, I needed a lot of therapy, as you can imagine. I had to forgive myself for wishing my father’s death. I was a terrible daughter, and I thought I had killed my father.

After that, how could I tell my mother that I was pregnant? And that is what happened. When I told her, what I heard was “you killed your father, and now you want to kill me?”. It was so awful, I took all the medicine I could take and ended up in the hospital for a suicide attempt. My boyfriend took me to the
hospital. She didn’t come to see me, she just showed me the hospital bill, a fortune. She just said: “I want this money back”. 453 was the number, I’ll never forget it. I use this number for everything in my life.

I had this load of mourning to deal with and a pregnancy test. I needed to solve
it. I went to him with the exam, put it in my belly and showed it to him. He tore off the paper and shouted “I don’t want this. I don’t want anything to do with this thing”. I had no doubt that it would have to be an abortion. I went to a doctor who was famous in my city, he did the surgery without anesthesia. I went with a friend who held my hand. I left there with a hemorrhage, I couldn’t go to my house, I went to my boyfriend’s house. I got more and more sick there. I had to ask my mother for help. She came back and we started trying to take care of ourselves. It was not easy.

Through the years, I have found many ways of healing all this pain. I started
therapy, I’m a Catholic, I go to the mass, receive communion and ask for forgiveness for all of this. I have daughters I’m crazy about. It was difficult for me to get pregnant, and I thought it was karma for all I have been through. I know it isn’t, but who would change my mind? I didn’t hide any of my feelings or who I am. I know that people will listen to me and say this or that, but aren’t we all this jumble? When you look at me, you can’t see it: I’m married, successful, a professional. Yet that was my past.

I’d rather send a written message, or do you want audio only? I can also copy the letter I wrote to my aborted son. It was a suggestion from a doctor I went to. When I wrote, I saw that I was on the final stretch of mourning. Do you want to read it?

It’s been many, many years. I was a college student but still financially dependent. There was no warm relationship between me and my feminine references in the house, any conversation about sexuality, about experiencing our feminine side fully. And it came in a scare. A positive result and fear in my heart. A cruel phrase from my sister, who accidentally was the first to know, still echoes in my head: “We expected nothing more from you.” It was all very lonely.

At first, I would remember the date every month after the abortion, until my
psychologist at the time said, “Shall we stop marking the anniversary?” This was important for me to get out of the eternal game: guilt, sadness, guilt. The doctor who made the intervention talked to my boyfriend at the time asking for the “tip” for payment. I’m sure I didn’t get anesthesia. It was the strongest pain I ever felt in my life. My soul hurt, my body hurt.

The doctor asked me to take a tampon with me. I had to leave right after the
procedure, walking as best as I could, bleeding. I bled for 15 days. He already had a name, even a pair of baby shoes. But I couldn’t go on with it. I didn’t want to be what they “expected of me.” It was very lonely. Very lonely indeed. And it still is.

Today, closer to menopause than fertility, I have no children. Self-punishment?
Perhaps. But I am already calmer with this eternal memory. It will always be lonely. Even if a friend lends a hand, even if a cousin takes care of you the following days. It’s always the woman with herself. I recently read a book of abortion stories: that’s when I realized that I was a good mother at the time, thinking about someone’s future and someone else’s life. I wish I could tell this to many women who have had abortions: you did nothing wrong. It’s not
your fault. Here is the letter I wrote him.