Peru’s abortion ban isn’t preventing women and girls from seeking abortions, feminist activists have told openDemocracy, but it is endangering their lives.
This was the case for Valeria*, a 23-year-old from the southern Peruvian city of Ayacucho, who became ill after buying fake abortion pills on the black market in 2019.
“There is a street in Ayacucho known for abortions – there I found a number to call for pills and bought nine,” she told openDemocracy. “Each one cost 37 soles ($10). My boyfriend took no responsibility and I saved the money on my own.”
Valeria was told the pills were Misoprostol, a drug for stomach ulcers that causes contractions in the uterus and is recommended by the World Health Organisation as the safest drug for inducing abortions. In Peru, it can be bought in pharmacies for stomach ulcers with a doctor’s prescription.
Unbeknownst to Valeria, she would have needed 12 of the pills for a safe abortion. She had some bleeding after taking the pills and thought the process had gone well. But two weeks later, she bled again and was taken ill with a fever. “The pills were not effective, it seems they were fake,” said Valeria, adding: “I was afraid to tell my mother or go to a hospital.”
Valeria borrowed some money and went to an illegal clinic, where she was offered a surgical abortion, but it cost 400 soles ($106) – far more than she had.
By the time she had raised enough money, Valeria was 20 weeks pregnant and desperate. She said: “I didn’t know if [the woman who performed the abortion] was a doctor, I didn't want to ask anything, I just wanted that nightmare to end.”
For Valeria, endangering her life with a black market abortion was the only option. Terminations are permitted in Peru only when a medical board says the health or life of the pregnant person is in danger and are illegal in all other circumstances, including when a pregnancy is the result of a woman or a child being raped.
Having an abortion is punishable by a prison sentence of up to five years. More often, though, those who are convicted receive a suspended sentence and are ordered to pay a fine and regularly check in at a police station or court for a set number of years.
Despite the ban, a 2005 study estimated that 370,000 abortions are carried out in Peru every year. One in five women aged between 18 and 49 has had at least one termination, according to a 2018 survey by the Centre for the Promotion and Defence of Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
Unsafe abortions are the fourth biggest cause of maternal death in Peru – between 50 and 70 women die from post-abortion complications each year.
Peruvian politicians last considered decriminalising abortion for rape victims in 2014, but the bill was shelved the following year due to lack of support. Last month Congress passed a law that grants embryos and foetuses personhood rights, including the right to identity.
The country has been in a serious political crisis since former president Pedro Castillo tried to dissolve Congress last December (and ended up ousted and imprisoned). Ultra-conservative legislators hold the majority of Congress seats.
“In a context of democratic crisis, in the face of conservative positions, we women end up being the most harmed, along with the LGTBIQ+ population; sexual and reproductive rights and policies end up not being applied,” Elga Prado, a coordinator of sexuality and bodily autonomy for feminist group Manuela Ramos Movement, told openDemocracy.
Prado added: “Abortion means discrimination. Women who have resources can access places where their lives are not at risk, but women, girls and adolescents who don't have money are forced to risk their lives in clandestine places.”
She told openDemocracy about a 34-year-old single mother of two children, who was raped by a boss at a local farm and became pregnant. “She went to a clandestine place, had a serious complication and did not tell anyone until she was at risk,” Prado said. “She was already suffering from necrosis of the lower limbs, which had to be amputated.”
Misinformation
Since 2005, Peru has been observed four times by United Nations bodies due to the violation of the human rights of girls and adolescents who have been forced to give birth after being raped.
That minors’ health and lives are endangered by pregnancies caused by rape means their abortions could be considered legal – a fact that more than 70% of public health centres are unaware of, according to a 2021 report by the ombudsman office.
Prado told openDemocracy about a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant when she was raped by her stepfather and sought a so-called ‘therapeutic abortion’, which would be allowed on the basis that continuing the pregnancy would threaten her mental health and put her life at risk.
Having already been refused by an abortion by a medical board, the girl went with her mother to ask for help from the Centro Emergencia Mujer (the Women’s Emergency Centre), which provides information to victims of gender-based violence
There, staff “told the mother and the girl not to seek a therapeutic abortion, as they would lose any chance of having evidence to report the aggressor and get justice,” Prado said.
With support from the Manuela Ramos Movement, the girl eventually managed to get an abortion after another medical board agreed with a psychiatric diagnosis that said her life was at risk.
But Prado said that rejections, and claims of the kind made by the Centro Emergencia Mujer, are common in rural areas. She added that the Manuela Ramos Movement has seen authorities tell women and girls that they will go to prison for having an abortion, regardless of the circumstances.
“Public offices are run by people who, instead of guaranteeing rights, are blocking them,” Prado added. When a patient arrives at a Peruvian hospital after having a failed abortion, she said, “the healthcare provider does not safeguard their life, but judges the woman and seeks out the police to try to get the woman to talk”.
A poll carried out in Peru by Ipsos this year found that 69% of the population think abortion should be decriminalised in cases of rape, while 41% are in favour of making it legal in “all” or “most cases” – an increase of 10 percentage points since last year.
Resistance from the margins
Feminist activist Antihoraria* became a companion for people seeking abortions through support group La Biblioteca (The Library) after finding herself in a similar situation to Valeria in 2014.
“Persecution and stigma don’t stop a woman from making the decision to have an abortion, they just push her into a corner,” she told openDemocracy. “No woman wants to go through an abortion because it is a painful process, but it is either that or forced motherhood and we must have the possibility to choose.”
Antihoraria and other members of The Library liaise with other feminist organisations and use anonymous posters and leaflets to advertise their work. Once they receive a message from a woman, they use medical checks and an ultrasound to review how many weeks pregnant the woman is and rule out an ectopic pregnancy. All being well, they then arrange the delivery of the pills and issue instructions on taking them safely.
The hardest part of the group’s work, Antihoraria said, is supporting teenagers from rural and low-income areas who do not want their families to find out they are pregnant but often share bedrooms with relatives or live in houses without bathrooms. The activists plan workshops or activities that give the girls an excuse to leave home for a night to have an abortion.
The support offered by The Library and other similar organisations is risky for Antihoraria and her colleagues. Helping someone to get an abortion is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison, though there is no evidence support group companions have ever been prosecuted. Still, the companions take care to never deliver the pills themselves, and to never have them delivered to partners, relatives or friends of the women.
More common, though, is persecution by anti-abortion activists. Members of another companion group, Serena Morena, told openDemocracy that they’re often harassed online and have been branded “murderers” and accused of “trading foetuses”. One member said: “They threaten to find us and send us to jail.”
“I got very afraid once, as a girl arrived with a man and started asking questions about who financed us, what we did for a living,” Antihoraria said. “I didn't give her the pills and managed to run away on a motorbike – she never contacted us again.”
But despite the risks, Antihoraria and her fellow activists won’t stop helping women in need or fighting for abortion to be decriminialised. Such a law change, she said, “will not mean women will have more abortions, it will only save lives”.
*Names have been changed.
