Thousands of women risked their lives in Spain for having to clandestinely abort with rudimentary and dangerous methods. For fear of being judged and shame, some remain silent, but others have let Paula Boira express their experience in ‘An abortion, 8,000 pesetas’, A book that remembers them and honings the networks that helped and protected them.
Boira (Castelló de la Plana, 1996), a journalist, knew how to tell in the words that, a little passed, heard in an interview on television Consuelo Catalá, the first president of the Association of Clinics accredited for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy (ACAI).
From that interview, in which Catalá commented on clandestine abortions in Valencia during Franco and the first years of the transition, the desire to investigate more, to recover police archives and judicial sentences, to gather testimonies … In sum, to investigate at a stage in which clandestinity was the only option of women to abort.
And as the voice was running that a journalist was writing a book about that stage, some women and even some of her daughters, They broke the barrier of fear that had gripped them so longthey contacted Boira and offered his testimony, although they had to appear with a fictional name.
All this work of almost two years has been reflected by this journalist, who currently works at the EFE agency, in the book ‘An abortion, 8,000 pesetas’, edited by books of the KO that its author dedicates, in addition to her grandfather Salvador, for filling her book shelves, “to women, for not conforming, resisting and waring.”
A dedication that is also a tribute to the networks that were created in the transitionled by women but also supported by men, who were, as the title of the first part of the book, “reproductive health pioneers” says.
The pioneers of the karman method
In an interview with Efe, Boira reviews that first part of the book that starts in the first years of the transition, when “the possibility of aborting without the terror of persecution in Francoism is opened a bit.
Why There is already the way to “leave out”, to London, to France, to Holland … but it was not available to any womanonly those that “could pay it.”
It was a stage – Añade Boira – in which family planning centers also appeared, such as in Madrid, which, with a “resistance box”, helped women with less resources to travel to London to be able to abort free. But in the end they could only help “a very small group.”
-Abortions with midwives and abortees continued, explains the author, but in the transition “that ray of light” opens-first in Valencia, which then exports to Seville- with the appearance of activist groups that began to apply the “Karman Method”, which is ultimately the abortion by aspiration that is practiced today, but in those moments in a more rudimentary way.
As rudimentary as sure, at least at that time. Boira describes it to Efe: “It was done with a nescafé boat and three cannulas. One was introduced into the vagina, another was connected with a pump to swell the bicycle wheels and the other with a vacuometer. In the case of the bomb he got backwards and instead of swelling, the uterus aspired“.
“That said, it seems a barbarity, but it really was the safest at that time. And much more affordable than traveling to London: even free for those who could not afford it,” says the author.
Glossary of Franco: From “criminal” abortion to fear and death
Paula Boira dedicates a part of the book to abortion in Franco, which he wanted summarize in a glossary that includes the words that most define that timefrom fear of violence, of guilt to death.
And in addition to a insal special and very dangerous clandestine practice that could lead to death or sequels such as chronic diseases and even sterility, abortion was persecuted to prison or with huge fines.
Many times, It was the husband himself, the mother, the brothers or sisters and even the doctors who attended them for some complication in abortionwho denounced women who went to midwives or aborteers to practice abortion with rue, parsley or a simple needle.
The last word of the glossary is “violence”, which impacted Boira of the stories that came to him, like those of girls of 14, 15 or 16 years who were pregnant when they were raped by the “young man” in the houses that served. Or sentences that the author could read in which cases were filed because the young woman “did not squeak” at the time of rape.
Paula Boira, who was born when abortion had already been legalized in certain cases, He has written this book to remember those women, who are still guilty and ashamed todayto which they always shut up for fear of being judged and those who gave their face for them.
And also for all those who did not know what was happening, but above all Boira You want to tend with this book a “dialogue line” between generations that creates awareness in the youngest so that it does not forget what happened and so that there is no reversal in everything achieved.
