One young woman who became pregnant as a newly-wed 19-year-old shared her story of obtaining abortion pills in Cayman and landing in hospital shortly afterwards.
The Compass is not naming the woman, who has asked for anonymity, in part because of the stigma surrounding women who have had abortions, but also because it’s an offence under the Penal Code for a woman to take any substance to bring about a deliberate miscarriage.
She and her husband had only been married for six months, when she found herself pregnant, despite being on birth control.
“I wasn’t ready,” she said. “Neither was my husband… I told him I could not do this. He called his friend who had said he could help get us something. It cost $500. The next day, the friend gave me the pills and that was it.”
It only took about an hour for the pills – misoprostol – to start taking effect.
“I started bleeding a lot,” she said. “At first, it was just bleeding. Then it started hurting really bad. It was horrible. I couldn’t leave the bathroom, I was just lying there, cramping and in pain.
“I’ve always been a little bit of a wimp when it comes to pain, I thought maybe it was just me. But when my husband came in, he said I didn’t look OK. I was sweating heavily, I was having cold sweats, and I looked super pale. I was in terrible pain and having excessive bleeding.
“When my husband said I didn’t look good, I knew it wasn’t just in my head and that I needed to go to the hospital.”
The couple arrived at the hospital’s emergency room around 3am, and didn’t leave until mid-afternoon.
“When we got there, the nurse asked if I was pregnant. They didn’t do anything apart from put me on an IV for the pain. That was it. … I told them that it hurt a lot.
“I didn’t see a doctor. I only saw a nurse. They never asked any other questions.
“Now that I think back on it, I think they probably knew what had happened and that’s why they didn’t ask me anything else. I think they knew.”
Being aware that abortion was illegal, she says she never went to her GP to confirm her pregnancy or to seek advice.
“I didn’t even think about going to a doctor. It all happened so fast,” she said.
“I have no idea how far along I was. I missed my period, and took a pregnancy test. And then took the pills the next day. I couldn’t have been that far along,” she added.
Coming from a country that requires a visa to enter the US, she was unable to travel to a clinic there to get an abortion.
“I didn’t have a visa to go,” she said.
So, like many other young women before her, she opted for an on-island solution, by buying misoprostol pills illegally. The only legal way to obtain the pills in Cayman is with permission from two doctors and a prescription.
Under Cayman’s laws, abortions are only available to women whose lives the pregnancy puts at risk.
Looking back now, a few years later, and asked if she would do things differently, she said, “I have no regrets over my decision. It wasn’t the right time to have a child. Back then, I was just starting my studies. I was only 19.”
She acknowledges that, in some ways, she was lucky.
“At least I had my husband with me,” she said. “Some girls, they don’t have family or friends that can help them. Some girls don’t have the money for the pills.
“And the people selling them could easily sell girls something else and just take their money. There’s nothing they could do about that.”
One doctor the Compass spoke to said a type of a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ situation occurs when women who have taken pills to end their pregnancy go to hospital.
The doctor told of one instance, of which she was aware, where a pregnant woman carrying a foetus with a congenital defect that would likely make it non-viable outside the womb had taken the pills and was in such severe pain afterwards she went to the hospital emergency room. “She told them she was having a miscarriage. I think that probably happens a lot.”
Although the law states that procuring an abortion is illegal, it does not appear that there has been any prosecutions under the Penal Code in Cayman. That’s not to say that abortions are not happening here. No recent research has been carried out to determine the extent to which women living in Cayman are getting abortions, but a 2013 government survey found that out of 202 teenage participants, 9.1% of 15 to 16 year olds, and 8.5% among 17 to 19 year olds admitted to having an abortion.
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