RIO DE JANEIRO — Last November, Xaiana, a 23-year-old college student in northern Brazil, began exchanging text messages with a drug dealer in the south of the country. Following the dealer’s instructions, she transferred 1,500 reais ($285), her living expenses for several months. Then, she waited three agonizing weeks for the arrival in the mail of a blister pack of eight unmarked white pills.
When she took them, they had the effect she was hoping for: She underwent a medication abortion at home with her boyfriend, ending an eight-week pregnancy.
But Xaiana kept bleeding for weeks, an unusual but not rare complication. “It was like a murder scene every time I had a shower,” she said. She was afraid to get help because it is illegal for a woman in Brazil to use the drug, misoprostol, to trigger an abortion. If she went to a clinic, she feared, the staff might figure out she had induced the abortion and report her. The penalty for having an abortion in Brazil is up to three years in jail.