Estefania kept herself calm, chatting to the sympathetic nurse about her three-year-old son and the long bus ride to the clinic, until the doctor inserted the forceps. They made her gasp in pain, her tensed hand springing from where the nurse had placed it on her chest, clutching at the surgical gown wrapped around her waist. She groaned and tears sprang to her eyes when the vacuum aspiration was turned on as she tried to follow the nurse's instructions.
"Breathe in through your nose, hold it, out through your mouth. In through your nose..."
Estefania is 24 and unemployed. Omar, her boyfriend and her son's father, drives a bus from four in the afternoon until midnight. He was with her at the clinic in the morning but had to leave before her abortion procedure to make his shift. She wanted an earlier appointment so he could be there, but there are other women alone in the waiting room, some of whom came with no company at all, so she wasn't out of place when he left. She wears a silver band on her ring finger even though they're not married.
"Having my son is beautiful, but another baby–" She doesn't want more children and fears she couldn't care for another, especially now that she's been let go from her convenience store job.
Estefania's case is an uncommon one: For many women in Colombia, getting a safe and legal abortion is a completely impossibility. If the country's newly galvanized pro-life movement can help it, however, stories like hers will only get rarer.
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