Venezuelan women forced to risk online pill market in face of abortion ban

Sofía was 20 years old and coming out of an emotionally abusive relationship when she found out she was pregnant.

Her ex-boyfriend called her a “slut” for having conceived and claimed that he was not the father. Appealing to Sofía’s conservative family for help was not an option, since they had long warned that they would disown her if she ever got pregnant.

Alone, afraid and scared of raising a baby alone in a broken country like Venezuela, she decided to end the pregnancy.

She knew Venezuela has one of the most restrictive abortion policies of the region, so the first thing she did was to call the country’s biggest pro-choice organization to ask for advice.

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“I told them I needed help, and all they did was ask personal questions about my economic status and where I lived, studied and worked,” said Sofía.

When she called a different reproductive health NGO, their response was to congratulate her for her pregnancy.

So Sofía started asking friends who had previously had abortions, and found out the solution was closer than she thought: online.

Platforms like Facebook Market and MercadoLibre, the lead e-commerce business in Latin America, are flooded with informal vendors selling birth control pills and misoprostol, the drug used for medical abortions. Such products are also touted on Instagram and Twitter.

But social media is also the perfect space for scammers who pretend to be doctors, nurses or pharmacists, and profit from the desperation and lack of knowledge of their customers.

“A man that claimed to be a doctor got mad at me because I was ‘doubting his professionalism’,” said Sofía. “I paid $200 for six pills but they turned out to be fake. I had no money left to buy more pills.”

After borrowing money, she found another vendor, Alberto, whose profile had been up for more than two years with great reviews. Besides misoprostol, his status updates were filled with offers of drugs and weapons.

He showed her testimonies of satisfied customers – but also warned that she could go to jail for what she was about to do. Sofía waited five days until a shipment from Colombia arrived. Alberto handed over the the pills in broad daylight, in the middle of a public square. They chatted for about 15 minutes, and he tried to sell her more pills than the ones she needed.

“For him, this is just a business,” she said.

Abortion in Venezuela is illegal in almost all circumstances. The 1926 law banning the procedure has been modified just once, with a 2006 reform allowing an abortion if the woman’s life is in danger. (The penal code still contains a clause reducing the penalty “if the author of the abortion commits it to save his or his mother, wife or children’s honour”.)

The harsh rules set socialist Venezuela at the far extreme from other Latin American countries such as Argentina, where abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy was recently legalized.

Since selling medicines online without authorization is illegal, online dealers have found ways to stay in the shadows. Using car-related code words, they sell an array of medicines ranging in price from $10 to $100 a pill.

“This has been happening for at least three or four years,” said a member of a Venezuelan pro-choice NGO who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. “Most of the vendors are either drug dealers or healthcare workers that take them from hospitals.”

The challenges for women seeking abortions are not just legal. Despite having the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela is mired in economic crisis. Shortages of basic foodstuffs, cash and medicines are endemic.

Among those shortages are common birth control methods, which are inaccessible to nearly 90% of the population, according to a 2019 report. There is little or no access to sexual education, and Venezuela also has the third-highest rate of teen pregnancy in Latin America, after Ecuador and Honduras.

Authorities have used the threat of criminal conviction to discourage women from seeking to terminate a pregnancy, but until last year there had been few known prosecutions.

That changed in October when an activist in Mérida state was arrested and prosecuted for helping an underage rape victim get an abortion. Vannesa Rosales was held for more than three months before being released to house arrest in January. Her lawyer says she will probably be charged with inducing an abortion and conspiring to commit a crime for her role in helping the girl terminate the pregnancy.

The girl’s mother was also detained although she was later released. The alleged rapist has been indicted but is still free.

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Since Rosales’s arrest, several NGOs have stopped offering their abortion advice or disappeared completely. Another four feminist organizations whose work is not related to reproductive rights have also received threats to stop their work, leaving people with no information resources on how to safely proceed or where to get the right pills.

“Being able to choose about our health, our life and our bodies is a human right that’s under attack in Venezuela – whether because there is no access to it, or because of the punishment and discrimination that comes with pursuing it,” said Vivian Díaz, manager of Amnesty International Venezuela.

Names have been changed