Brazilian women break taboo to talk about illegal abortions
RIO DE JANEIRO — The doctor was late. So the women sat quietly in the waiting area of a clinic in an upscale neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro until they were overcome by thoughts of what they were about to do and what might happen to them. They began to talk.
One woman said she was in a relationship with a drug lord and knew he would force her to have “his” baby if he found out she was pregnant. Another was a successful businesswoman who had separated from her children’s father and become pregnant accidentally by another man. A third just cried.
A fourth, Roberta Cardoso, had become pregnant accidentally with her boyfriend and felt she wasn’t mature enough to become a mother.
“At that moment I probably knew much more about their stories than their families did,” Cardoso, 26, said during a recent interview with The Associated Press.