* Translation: Madeline Robinson

Foto:  Artturi Mäntysaari en Pixabay

I’m Portuguese, but I’ve lived in Spain for six years. The events that I’m about to describe happened to me when I was 25 and in my final year of university. Before abortion was decriminalized in Portugal in 2007, it was only legal up to 12 weeks in the case of risk to the mother, 16 weeks in the case of rape and 24 weeks in the case of foetal abnormality. This happened in 2005.

I was 11 days late. I went to the 24-hour pharmacy to have a pregnancy test. While I waited, I realised that I was sat right in front of the baby products. “Fuck, please don’t let this be a sign,” I thought.

There were two pharmacists, a tall one and a short one. The tall one came out with the results of the test: positive. It was like someone had hit me in the face. I started to cry in front of that whole pharmacy. The pharmacists lead me to a room in the back to calm me down, I asked them to, please, help me. The short one answered that there wasn’t much they could do.

The short one went to attend to a customer. The tall one then gave me the number and address of a gynaecologist: “He might be able to help you”. I took the paper, paid for the test and left.

I had to call the guy that at the time was my boyfriend. We always used a condom. Always. Something had gone wrong and we hadn’t realised. I called him and asked him to come and see me. He told me he couldn’t as his parents would know something was up, that they’d start asking questions and he wouldn’t know what to tell them. He was on holiday with his parents. I was alone.

The next day I went to the gynaecologist. On the walls of the consulting room there were some drawings that I guessed were by the gynaecologist’s granddaughter. The smiling gynaecologist told me to come through and asked me what had happened. I told him that my pregnancy test had come out positive and he told me to get on to the bench so that he could examine me. Two minutes passed before he asked me when I’d had my last period, according to his calculations, the baby would be born on 25^th December. I told him that I’d come to him because I was told he might be able to help me. The smile disappeared, and he asked me, almost offended, who had recommended him to me. I didn’t tell him, and I realised that he wouldn’t be able to help me when he told me that a baby is a gift, and that I’d see once it was born. I paid 50 euros for the consultation and left.

I didn’t have many options. One was to go to Spain and have a safe, legal abortion. I was a student. I couldn’t ask my parents for money for an abortion and my ex was on minimum wage. The only other option was medication abortion.

I’d heard of the organization Women on Waves. I went to their website and read that it was possible to induce an abortion with Misoprostol. My boyfriend managed to get the pills from some village pharmacy. We were lucky, as apparently it’s prescription medication. He pretended that they were for his grandmother but that he’d left the prescription at home and that he’d drop it off later.

I prepared myself for what was to be the worst experience of my life. I bought two packs of sanitary towels and followed the instructions on the website. In half an hour the contractions began, and then the haemorrhage. I remember the pain. I’d never felt anything like it. It was like a red-hot poker moving through my belly over and over again. I was on my bedroom floor with a towel underneath me; outside my flatmates went about their daily lives. I felt like I was about to faint. I thought about going to A&E, but I was scared that they’d find out what I’d done.

I don’t know how long I stayed there on the floor until I could get up to wash myself. I bled for something like three days until finally it stopped. Then I just had to wait. I couldn’t eat or sleep for days. Although it was the worst experience of my life I don’t regret doing it. I don’t feel guilty at all. I don’t think of myself as the murderer that they say I am.

Before, we had to come to Spain for abortions; now it looks like Spanish women will have to abort in Portugal.

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