Need an Abortion in Chile? Call this number

Abortion is entirely illegal in Chile, without exception. Yet today is International Day of Action for Women’s Health and Women on Waves, a fearless reproductive rights group (on a boat) from Holland that docks in ports worldwide to promote safe access to abortion services, is doing something about it.  They’ve just announced a new hot line in Chile that will give women information on how to safely procure an abortion using the medication Misoprostol.

Miso, as it’s often called for short, is on the market nearly everywhere as an ulcer medication, but it’s widely known that it can also be used effectively as an abortifacient.  In the U.S., where medication abortion is legal and common, Miso is in fact the second drug administered to complete an abortion. 

In poorer parts of the world, Miso is amazingly common and cheap, and highly important in critical reproductive health care.  It’s often used to prevent post-partum hemorrhaging (women bleeding to death after giving birth), and in parts of the world where women die in childbirth by the thousands, it’s saving lives.  It can also be used, as Women on Waves promotes, to produce an abortion.  And in parts of the world where abortion is illegal and yet women are putting themselves in all sorts of horrible and dangerous situations just to end their pregnancies (coat hangers, drinking bleach, falling down stairs, etc.), this tiny pill is, again, saving lives.

Hooray for Women on Waves and their intrepid partner women’s groups on the ground for taking a bold action that will save many lives.

J.Mack is a feminist residing in Brooklyn.