Dying in silence: How abortion kills Filipino mothers

By Elena Masilungan • Newsbreak

MANILA, Philippines –Amelia, 35, was sure she was dying. She was lying in bed in the emergency room of a busy hospital in Manila. Her dress was drenched in blood. Her stomach was in terrible pain.

Patients recuperate from post-abortion complications at the Fabella Memorial Hospital (Photo taken by Elena Masilungan for Newsbreak)

It happened almost a year ago. Her husband brought her to the hospital because she had been bleeding for three days. It got to a point when she had to change her sanitary pad every 30 minutes. Paracetamol only made the pain in her stomach worse. “I was so weak I could not even sit up. I got scared and went to the hospital.”

Amelia was suffering from complications due to induced abortion.

When she found out she was pregnant, she began seeing the hilot in their neighborhood thrice a week for three weeks for “massage” sessions. The hilot kneaded, poked and pressed her stomach for 10 to 15 minutes during these sessions. On the fourth week of her “massage” sessions, she started bleeding.

It was painful. It was also a crime.

The country’s penal code, enacted 8 decades ago, punishes with imprisonment women who undergo abortion.

Amelia’s case is by no means unique. A study done by the Guttmacher Institute said that in 2008 alone, 560,000 induced abortions were performed in the Philippines.

Amelia took the risk because she and her husband could no longer afford another—their 9th, supposedly—child to feed. A street vendor whose husband ekes out a living as a “pedicab” driver, Amelia considered her pregnancy as just another expense, “gastos lang.”

During an interview in their one-room shanty in Manila, Amelia was putting to sleep her one-year-old infant. Her two eldest children were not home, but neither were they in school. Her nine-year-old son was working as an errand boy in a nearby restaurant, while her 10-year-old was busy manning a car park by the streets.

Only her seven-year-old daughter was in school. The four other kids were with Amelia’s mother, since Amelia had to work.

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