RISKY WOMEN’S BUSINESS

While I took five minutes to use the feral doctor’s office toilet, expelling the last of a major bout of diarrhoea next to the cracked paint and overflowing bin – a fun side-effect from my first attempt at clandestine abortion – I tried to clear my head. I didn’t get why terminating an unwanted pregnancy needed to be so difficult, requiring secret phone calls, forged prescription pads, maxi-pads, painful cramps and, so far, almost $NZ100 cash. But jumping hoops is commonplace in religiously conservative Peru, where I’d found myself accidentally up the duff.

There was only me, my flatmate-Spanish translator Brenda, and a couple of stragglers left in the waiting room when she arrived – the doctor who’d promised via WhatsApp that she could get rid of the fetus without surgery for 90 Peruvian soles (about $NZ45). She walked us into a back room where everything seemed legit. The bed with cold metal stirrups, ultrasound machine and a teacher-y desk; all that was missing were the outdated Woman’s Day mags.

And maybe it was because this was my last chance to end the pregnancy without surgery – several days before, I’d taken 12 misoprostol pills, which didn’t work (16 is the maximum dose). Initially I had a good feeling about this doctor. Tall with cropped hair and thick-framed glasses, she had an air of anarchy that I liked.

Anarchist Doctor suggested I take the final round of pills vaginally and orally, the way you do in New Zealand. It was more likely to work than taking them all by mouth as I’d previously done, she said. But she struggled to insert two tablets far enough into my vagina to be effective. As she