The Doctor Smoked Throughout My Abortion. I Felt the Whole Procedure.

This piece was originally published on VICE Romania.

Since the start of the pandemic, most public hospitals in Romania have been treating abortions as "non-essential" procedures, with gender equality NGO Centrul Filia revealing in May that of 112 institutions contacted, only 31 public hospitals and five private clinics were providing abortions during the pandemic.

For some women, this will mean added trauma in an already difficult time. But the issue is not a new one in Romania, where, pre-pandemic, 51 of our 375 public hospitals already refused to provide abortions in the first 14 weeks, despite that being the legal timeframe in Romania. Another 36 won't perform them on religious holidays, with the majority of those citing personal or religious reasons. This is in a country where more than 9,000 women died due to complications from illegal abortions under the Communist regime.

Cristina grew up in an underprivileged environment in Bucharest. Having never received any sex education, she accidentally fell pregnant in 2015. She decided to share the details of her horrific abortion experience, hoping it could help shed some light on the way Romanian women are treated when they try to take charge of their bodies.

I was 18 and about to sit my final exams. But because I was now "of age", my parents had stopped giving me any money, so I got a job at a hairdresser.

At the time, my boyfriend and I had been together for a year. When we had sex, we used the pull out method or the calendar method, because we didn’t always have enough money to buy contraception. One night, there was an accident and I couldn’t afford the morning after pill, so I had a shower straight away, hoping that would solve it. A bit later that month, I had intense pain in my ovaries and breasts – a sign I was about to get my period. But it didn’t come.

I realised something was wrong and thought my ovaries might be inflamed, so I asked the salon owner to let me off early for an OB/GYN appointment. He said no. He had a good reputation in the industry, but had strung me along for a whole month saying he was going to put me on a contract. So I quit the next day. He offered me 400 lei (€83) for the entire month and told me that’s how much I’d earned. I had zero experience, so I accepted it and left.

My mum found out what he’d done and called him up to argue. He told her a bunch of lies about my work ethic, and then told her I was pregnant. The best part is, I didn’t even know that myself yet.

Since I’d missed my appointment and still had no idea what was going on with my body, I bought a pregnancy test and got the result I'd feared most. My boyfriend went white as a sheet – I thought he was going to faint. I was scared, too, but tried not to show it.

We were too young to raise a child, despite me coming from a long line of young mothers. My mum had me at 19. She'd also had an abortion shortly after marrying my step dad, so she understood my situation.

“Go see my doctor and tell her I don’t know you’re pregnant," she said. "She might pull some strings. And get an ultrasound, too, to make sure it’s not something else.”

My world collapsed at the ultrasound. They told me I was five weeks pregnant and the foetus had a heartbeat. I’m an adamant feminist and believe every woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy. But when she asked, “Do you want to keep the pregnancy?” I was so overwhelmed I felt like screaming. I understand the question now, but at the time, I was a terrified 18-year-old kid who knew nothing about abortions.

In 2015, nearly 10,000 underaged women gave birth in Romania. Back then, health education was only taught if schools opted in, and I didn’t get any of that at home, nor at school.

I called my mum and she advised me to go to Bucharest University Emergency Hospital first. They said they would charge 1,500 lei (€310) for an abortion, and when I told them there was no way for me to get that kind of money, they shrugged me off.

I cried my eyes out during the two-day quest to find a hospital I could afford. I was clueless, and no one had explained what would happen next. But from what my grandma had told me of her own traumatic abortion experience in the past, they were going to cut me open and take it out.

I eventually wound up at the Polizu Maternity Hospital, where they said they’d charge 500 lei (€103). I only had 250 (€52) left from the 400 at the salon, so my boyfriend got a loan from a friend and I managed to book in for the following day.

That morning, I was first in line outside the doctor’s office. I paid and went into a hospital room with four beds, which looked straight out of the 1970s. The nurse told me to put on a clean pair of underwear, a sanitary pad and my nightgown. When I asked her what was going to happen next, she looked me up and down and said bluntly, “You should’ve known, since you like to fuck.”

Another patient arrived. She was in her forties and told me she already had three grown children and didn’t want another at her age. Then there was also a girl whose foetus had died inside her because she hadn't known she was pregnant when she'd had some X-rays.

My turn came. The same nurse told me I had to pay an extra 200 (€41) upfront, for the doctor. I told her I didn’t have it. Because I didn't have the bribe money, she only gave me half the anaesthetic. The doctor had a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. The anaesthetic hadn’t even kicked in, but it didn’t matter to him.

I felt everything during the procedure. I felt like I was being cut in half, and was crying with pain. The doctor didn’t stop smoking his cigarette throughout, while the nurse held my hand, repeatedly saying I just had to hold on a little longer. When I told them I could feel everything, they said that I should. As if that was the price I had to pay for my mistakes. It lasted a few minutes, but felt like hours.

The anaesthetic only kicked in afterwards. They sat me down on a bed and told me to wait there until it wore off. That’s when my boyfriend came in to see me.

Ten minutes later, the doctor showed up, with a prescription for antibiotics and pessaries [inserted into the vagina to treat infection]. He asked me to get dressed and leave. I left the hospital crying. I felt like my ovaries were being torn up inside me.

I considered suing the doctor, but it would have boiled down to a “he said, she said”. And as a “sinner” who had an abortion at 18, it’s unlikely they would have believed me. In time, I’ve realised I never had an alternative to that abortion. If I’d kept that baby, its life would have been marked by my own frustrations, and my boyfriend's. Nobody deserves that. But at 23, I’m still not over it. For a long time, I thought I had taken a life.

Every year, on the 2nd of October, the day of the abortion, I’m a wreck. I was left with a lot of self-esteem issues and became depressed and anxious after the procedure. Whenever I see women with small children, I imagine how old my own would have been.

The only person who was – and still is – able to lift me out of that feeling is my boyfriend. We’re still together, and we recently had our sixth anniversary. The abortion changed our relationship dynamic, made us grow up, and brought us even closer. One month after, we resumed our sex life, but we were really afraid of getting pregnant again. That’s also when I started taking contraceptive pills. I’ve decided to go off the pill when I turn 25, and if I get pregnant I won't have an abortion. It would be different then; it would make us happy.

In the meantime, I've started a university degree. I haven’t allowed this episode to ruin my future. I love myself more than ever and think of myself as a strong woman. But I might give therapy a chance one day, to put this chapter to rest once and for all.

It's clear to me that all girls need to protect and inform themselves. Don’t just play it by ear, using old wives’ remedies. Most teenagers won’t listen to adults when it comes to sex, but these days there are more relatable ways of educating young people. In some cases, it could save lives.