This story is one in the Faithful Providers series published by Lauren Barbato in Conscience Magazine.
By Laura Gil, MD, Program Director Fundación Oriéntame, Colombia
I had just been admitted to medical school when I discovered I was pregnant. I was only 16 years old. I knew I needed to have an abortion, and it was not a hard decision for me to make.
I was raised in a Presbyterian family—a minority in predominantly Catholic Colombia. My parents, who were both chemists, supported birth control but never talked about abortion. We also never discussed abortion in church, but we did learn about loving behavior and what it means to make good decisions.
I realized that it was about self-determination. I was free to decide if I wanted to terminate my pregnancy, and no one—not my church or my parents—could tell me what to do. I was the only one who knew what would be the best decision for me and my future, and I made this decision based on my own conscience and personal relationship with God.
Abortion was completely illegal in Colombia, so I needed to get a backstreet one. It actually was not that hard to find. I saw an ad in the newspaper and went. I am not going to tell you that the doctor’s office was dark or dirty—it was just a typical, if undercover, medical office—but I was scared. It felt dangerous.
No one counseled me before the procedure, and no one educated me about contraception. The doctors and staff were there just to provide the service. Although the procedure itself was medically safe, the whole thing was legally unsafe. It is not common here in Colombia to prosecute girls and women who have illegal abortions. But I have met girls who were jailed for it, so I realized much later that arrest had been a possibility. So many terrible things could have happened to me.
Yet, during the procedure, I only felt thankful that God had led me to these doctors and nurses. Afterwards, I was so relieved that I wanted to send them flowers or chocolate or cookies—anything to express my gratitude. Now that I am an abortion provider, I better understand that feeling. I also understand that, as an abortion provider, I am not expecting flowers or chocolates or anything from my patients. I am happy to do my job, and I believe the doctors and nurses who helped me were satisfied that they were able to bring abortion services to women.
I always wanted to be a gynecologist, but I never expected to work in abortion care. It just happened. I was offended by the way my colleagues would mistreat women who had abortions. I started thinking, “That could be me; that was me.” I know so many women who had abortions who just look the other way and do not support the right to choose, even as they became doctors. I never thought that was right. I could never just turn the other way.
When abortion was still illegal, I provided information on how to safely terminate pregnancy to whoever needed help. A lot of people knew I was in favor of legal abortion and that I did not believe in penalizing women, so my patients felt that they could ask me questions without judgment. I told them how to take misoprostol—I could not provide the drug itself, but I would give my patients safe guidelines.
In 2006, Colombia partially decriminalized abortion, allowing the procedure for various reasons, including fetal abnormalities and a woman’s health. At the time, I was working as a gynecologist at a private hospital.
Our first legal abortion requests were from pregnant patients whose fetuses had severe abnormalities. Despite the needs of our patients, no one at the hospital wanted to perform abortions. My colleagues were very well-known doctors and, even if they secretly supported abortion, they were afraid of the stigma attached to it. So I performed all of the abortions myself.
I figured that if I was taking care of women who were miscarrying or women who had other pregnancy complications, I also had to treat women who wanted to terminate a pregnancy. As a doctor, there is nothing different to learn about abortion than what you learn from treating a miscarriage. I started getting more and more cases, and eventually, the reproductive health organization Fundación Oriéntame invited me to start formal abortion training with the organization.
Currently, I am one of a handful of doctors in Colombia who provide later abortions. Our abortion law has no gestational age limit because you cannot limit the right to choose at any gestational age. However, many doctors do not know what to do with patients who are beyond 20 weeks gestation. As I trained doctors through Fundación Oriéntame, I realized there were so many women with late pregnancies in dire situations and that these patients were being turned away because doctors were uncomfortable with providing third-trimester abortions. I believed it was consistent with my Christian faith to provide them.
During the Zika virus epidemic, we saw a lot of pregnant women with severe fetal abnormalities who were not detected until 28, 29 or 30 weeks. Besides me and maybe five or six other doctors, no one else would provide abortions for these women.
Sadly, it remains common here for doctors to be conscientious objectors when it comes to abortion. The Catholic hierarchy, of course, plays a big part in that, influencing the way health professionals act: If being a Catholic means not supporting abortion, then doctors will refuse to perform abortions because they want to avoid looking like bad Catholics in front of their patients and colleagues.
I once did a survey among gynecologists, asking the question: “How much does your religion influence your professional decisions?” About 60 percent of respondents said it highly influences their decisions. That is worrisome to me. As a health provider, you are allowed to have a religious affiliation, but you cannot allow your religion to dictate the type of care you provide to your patients, especially if it is telling you to limit women’s rights and women’s bodily autonomy.
Most, if not all, of my patients identify as Catholic. They have exercised their conscience. I see a lot of women who are in an extreme situation and believe that it is justified by God. They don’t feel guilty. None of my patients has ever changed her mind because of being a Catholic. I have never had a patient tell me that she will not have an abortion anymore because a priest or bishop convinced her not to.
Still, some of my Catholic patients struggle with very deep internal conflict, because they know they need an abortion, but feel guilty and judged. They feel like they will not be able to go to church anymore or that they will be automatically excommunicated and unable to receive communion.
I often think about my patients and what they must feel inside when they go to Mass and hear a priest preach about the evilness of women who have had abortions. There is so little I can do to counter that—to address the power and rhetoric of the Catholic hierarchy. The fact that they are going to go to Mass for the rest of their lives and hear that they are murderers is hurtful and wrong.
I want my patients to remember why they made their decision. I tell them, “Don’t let people make you forget why you are doing this. You are doing this because you love your family and because you love yourself.”
As a Protestant in a Catholic country, there is actually a higher moral expectation for me. People ask me all the time, “You’re a Christian—why are you in favor of a woman’s right to choose? Why do you perform abortions?”
I tell them I perform abortions because, to be a true Christian, I must support women who have abortions. For me, it has always been spiritual. The decision to terminate a pregnancy does not have to go against your religion. I know mine did not. I had an abortion because of my Presbyterian faith. I knew I had the freedom to make my own decision; I made a loving decision, and so have my patients.
The decision to terminate a pregnancy comes from the heart. People believe women have abortions outside their relationship with God and then go and ask for forgiveness, but that is not the case. It is a decision you make with your Christian conscience, so you should always feel supported in your relationship with God.