Abortion in Venezuela, between criminalization and taboo

María drank a concoction with avocado seeds, leaves of “bad mother” and other plants to try to interrupt their pregnancy, but it didn’t work and it ran out of options. abort in Venezuela it is illegal and is only accessible clandestinely if you have money.

26 years old and mother of five girls, María lives in extreme poverty, staying at a friend’s house in a poor neighborhood of Caracas.

“One loses life giving birth, giving birth, giving birth”tells AFP the young woman, who asked to protect her identity with a fictitious name. “I didn’t want to have more children, I filled up with boys too quickly”the Mint.

Her two youngest daughters live with her, a three-year-old and a ten-month-old baby. The other three, a five-year-old and two nine-year-old twins, are at her grandmother’s house.

She tried to abort her third pregnancy. “I tried to remove it, I took avocado seeds, home remedies and it never came out”says María, who confesses that the “recipe” It was given to her by a friend who had tried it successfully.

Venezuela, a fervently Catholic and conservative country, penalizes induced abortion with jail for up to six years. According to the penal code of 1926, reformed in 2005, the penalties are reduced if you seek to protect the “honor” of the woman and her family -without specifying what this refers to- and are forgiven if it is done to “save the life” of the mother.

“With the homemade guarapos, supposedly, the baby comes out and there is no residue of anything”explains Maria. “With the pills it does stay and the doctors realize (…) and here you can’t do that because they put you in jail,” underlines.

Far from the “green tide”

Almost half of the pregnancies in the world are unwanted and 60% ends in an abortion, according to the UN, which reported that Four. Five% of interruptions are unsafe.

Venezuela does not publish health figures, including abortion cases. One thing is certain in the midst of the existing opacity: this country of almost 30 million inhabitants is far from surfing the “green tide” of the pro-abortion movements that bathed Latin America in recent years.

Abortion is decriminalized in Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay, but the issue has never been a priority in 24 years of governments of the ruling Chavista movement.

Parliament, with an official majority, announced in 2021 that it would legislate on the matter, but there is nothing concrete.

“It is not a priority (in Venezuela) that women die from abortions in unsafe conditions”laments Belmar Franceschi, executive director of the NGO Plafam, which provides sexual and reproductive guidance.

A teacher was arrested in 2020 for assisting in the abortion of a 13-year-old teenager, pregnant in a rape, and spent nine months under arrest. The attacker was released.

And last May, the police dismantled an alleged “band dedicated to promoting illegal abortion”which was nothing more than a feminist collective that accompanied women who wanted to terminate their pregnancy safely.

An anti-abortion influencer on social networks made the complaint and published a photo of a woman guarded by a police officer. As a result of the case, many activists ceased their activity.

“Like a teenager”

In public hospitals, abortion is impossible, but in private centers they charge up to 1,000 dollars for performing it clandestinely.

Zarina, a 35-year-old musician, found out she was pregnant on the fourth day of her menstrual delay. Three tests came back positive. However, she did not understand, as she was taking birth control pills.

She decided to have an abortion, but she didn’t know how. “Take your responsibility” They told him at the first health center he went to ask. “I felt like a teenager” confess.

He bought some pills that he was told were abortive on an e-commerce portal. She searched for them in a neighborhood, secretly, and took them while she underwent an acupuncture treatment. Everything failed.

The weeks passed and despair grew. She consulted doctors, who as they explained the procedure to terminate the pregnancy, deleted messages so as not to leave evidence. They asked for between $400 and $1,000.

“I didn’t have the money and I told her that I was leaving my instrument, which is worth thousands of dollars, while I put it together. She told me that she was not interested, that he bring the money and that’s it “account.

Finally, a gynecologist attended her and charged her $500 for fees.

“I felt safe”recalled Zarina, who also asked to change her name to “do not go to jail” She aborted with “respect, human warmth, without pain, without psychoterror, without scolding.”

“Divine punishment”

Demonstrations in favor of safe abortion are multiplying. “In a novel way for the Venezuelan political scene, (the issue) has taken to the streets en masse,” highlights Claudia Rodríguez, an activist with the feminist NGO Mujer en Lucha.

But anti-abortion expressions are also growing, such as a march promoted by evangelical movements that brought together hundreds in Caracas a few days ago.

Ketsy Medina, 40, suffered a missed abortion in the ninth week of pregnancy, in which the zygote is not expelled. It was a wanted pregnancy.

She decided to wait to expel the embryo without traces of curettage and, as the weeks went by, she hoped that the diagnosis was wrong and the fetus was fine.

He went to a maternity hospital for an ultrasound hoping to detect a heartbeat, but they received him with suspicion. “No matter how old you are, they will always suspect that you caused an abortion”says this woman, who became pregnant again and a year later gave birth to a girl, now three months old.

And the deep-rooted social condemnation comes laden with guilt. María wants to tie her tubes, but she couldn’t in her last delivery due to an episode of preeclampsia. She is saving the money to take state-mandated tests for a free operation.

Now, she is worried about her three-year-old daughter, who is hospitalized for an asthma attack. She thinks that it is a divine punishment. “I ask God (forgiveness) for everything I did, for trying to take my daughters away from me. I regret”underlines crestfallen.

Source: AFP