POLICE SIRENS
Women who abort their foetuses in the Philippines risk a prison sentence of upto six years, while anyone providing help or assisting faces a similar sentence as well as the loss of any medical licence.
Only one in four women have a surgical procedure according to the Guttmacher Institute. The 4,000-15,000 peso cost, usually in private clinics, is beyond the pockets of most women.
Over 30 percent ingest either cytotec, an anti-ulcer treatment they can buy in pharmacies, or herbal concoctions, often sold in stalls in front of churches.
Around 20 percent take hormonal drugs, or aspirin, as well as other medications and alcohol. Some starve themselves or fling themselves down stairs. Most women only succeed in ending their pregnancy after multiple attempts.
Among poor women seeking abortions, over 20 percent get massages from hilots or insert catheters in their vaginas.
One mother of three, who had two abortions, said the hilot's touch was agony.
"When she squeezed, it was so painful I wanted to kick her. I bit the blanket. I wanted to cry but I felt I had to contain myself," said the woman, who declined to be named.
"The pain was worse than childbirth."
The second time she had a surgical procedure in a backstreet clinic without anaesthetic.
"The room was so close to the street I could hear cars and police sirens," she said. "I was afraid I was going to be arrested with my legs wide open."
Dr Junice Melgar, executive director of Likhaan, a women's health organisation, said a lack of information about artificial contraception and myths about their side-effects was putting some poor people off using them.
"There is a lot of fear among the women," she said. "You have women choosing abortion before family planning because of these fears."
Ignorance and rumours, sometimes spread by pro-life groups and members of the clergy, have led some Filipinos to believe that the contraceptive pill is made from placenta and the tablets accumulate in the abdomen and cause cancer.
FEEL THE PAIN
Although abortion is rarely discussed publicly in the Philippines, nearly 80,000 women are treated in hospitals every year for complications from induced abortion, according to health reports.
Many are treated roughly by nurses and doctors who abhor what they have done. Painkillers are sometimes withheld. At least 800 women are estimated to die every year from complications.
"Doctors feel that women need to feel the pain so that they will remember and not do it again," said Melgar.
Women who have miscarried sometimes suffer the same ill-treatment because they are suspected of inducing the loss.
Gemma Apelado, a mother of one, said doctors let her bleed all night when she went to a hospital in Tondo, a poor area of Manila, after having a miscarriage at four months.
"They were all standing around me and they were saying that I took something to induce an abortion," she said. "They were telling me I didn't have any conscience."
Minda, the hilot, says her conscience has started to trouble her. The mother of nine administers pills to induce abortion and uses heavy strokes to push the foetus down.
"I worry about karma," she said. "But I also pity those having to undergo abortions".
