Four years ago I self-induced an abortion with pills I’d bought on the internet. I did it in a room I was renting. My partner was with me. I was entering my sixth week of pregnancy. The decision to terminate wasn’t easy. But when I saw those two red lines on the pregnancy test, I knew my world was about to change forever. I had to make a decision. After crying all day and doing some research online, I finally built up the courage to call an NGO’s consultation hotline that handled unplanned pregnancies. I needed to know what options were available for me.
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A friendly male voice greeted me, and asked how he could help. During our call he told me I had three options. First, I could move forward with the pregnancy and have a child. This was not an option for me because I was in no position to be a parent. Second, I could continue the pregnancy and put my child up for adoption. I didn’t feel I could choose this option either. The adoption system in Indonesia is very complex and I felt I could never guarantee that my child would be cared for. The final option was to abort.Abortion is legal in Indonesia only for extreme cases like rape – which even sometimes get denied – or when the pregnancy endangers the mother’s health. For women like me, the options are to undergo an expensive, dangerous procedure at an illegal clinic, or self-induce a medical abortion at home.I chose the latter. I purchased abortion pills after browsing underground online shops. The seller I chose offered two options. One was a cheaper option for Rp 400 thousand (US$28), and the other was a more expensive, but apparently more effective set of pills for Rp 600 thousand (US$42). I went for the second option.I read up on The World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidelines to make sure I was purchasing and taking the right pills. I comforted myself with the International Women’s Health Coalition’s report that millions of women worldwide have had safe abortions with this method since the pill I chose was first introduced in the late 80s.
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To purchase the pills, all I needed to do was provide my name, address, and to pay. Less than a week later, they arrived in a brown package labelled “clothes”. The pills were taped to a piece of cardboard and slipped between pieces of fabric.The instructions were to take a first batch of pills, followed by a second batch after 24 hours. After taking the first set of pills, I felt almost normal and decided to go to the movies to try and calm my nerves. The distraction failed. While I physically felt okay, my mind was a tangled mess.I talked to my “would’ve been child” that night. I kept apologising that I wasn’t ready to have them. I wasn’t ready to be a parent. “We’ll meet again one day,” I said, crying myself to sleep.The next day I prepared to take the second lot of pills, gathering menstrual pads and a warm compress. Following the instructions, I put four pills under my tongue and let them dissolve. They were bitter and tasted like chalk. I only started to feel the effects three hours later.It began as a sharp, twisting pain in my stomach. It was worse than menstrual cramps and didn’t go away when I changed positions or tried distracting myself by watching TV.My partner never left my side during all this. He did everything I asked and held my hand when I felt like I wanted to give up. Of course there was no going back after I’d consumed the medicine.Several hours after the cramps began, the pain intensified and became unbearable. Instinct told me to go to the bathroom, even though I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there. A large red blob came out of me when I was sitting limply on the toilet. I flushed it away. The pain slowly subsided until it had completely gone. I never, ever want to go through that again.
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There is a massive stigma against abortions in Indonesia. As a result, finding a safe clinic is like looking for a needle in a haystack. While I was lucky in my experience of a self-induced medical abortion, many others aren’t. There are countless online sellers offering fake and dangerous drugs to desperate people who have no way of verifying the goods.Four years have gone since my termination. In the course of those years, several of my friends have come to me seeking advice for their own unwanted pregnancies. I tell them everything I know, from the information I’ve found online. I explain the risks, suggest the hotline, and try and help them find a trusted seller. But it’s not a real alternative to medical advice, and I hope that one day, it’s real doctors guiding women through the process.
*The writer uses a pseudonym to protect her privacy.Views My Own is a safe space for anyone who wants to share their opinions and personal essays about important or controversial issues that should be known by everyone, especially young people. Send your story pitches to indonesia@vice.com.This article originally appeared on VICE Indonesia.
*The writer uses a pseudonym to protect her privacy.Views My Own is a safe space for anyone who wants to share their opinions and personal essays about important or controversial issues that should be known by everyone, especially young people. Send your story pitches to indonesia@vice.com.This article originally appeared on VICE Indonesia.