Original subtitles

- We are now handing out forms

that is a safe-abortion hotline that we launched

with information that women can call

to get the medicine here in Morocco

that they can use to do a safe abortion themselves.

- It all started when I was working with Greenpeace

as a ship's doctor in countries where abortion was illegal.

I'd seen a lot of women brought in severely bleeding

or in shock because of illegal abortions.

I realize that there is a connection

between the law and the fact that women are dying.

I could not observe that and just let it happen.

How could we create a space

where the only permission a woman needs is her own?

- At one point, the captain of the Greenpeace ship said,

"if you had a Dutch ship, you could take women aboard

and sail to international waters,

and legally help them with a safe abortion."

So I decided to investigate that,

and that is how Women On Waves started.

- An abortion in the Netherlands can only take place

in a special licensed clinic or hospital,

so we built a mobile clinic.

It is a shipping container

outfitted on the inside with a treatment room.

We didn't need a full clinic to give abortion with pills,

but we built it to help us get the medical license.

The idea was to do a private project,

and local Irish women's groups invited us to come to Ireland

for our maiden voyage.

A group of 10 women funded the first campaign.

They each put in 10,000 guilders.

Then we needed to rent a ship, to get ship's insurance,

find a captain and licensed deckhands.

We needed a gynecologist and the medication.

We applied for the mobile-clinic license.

There was a lot to prepare.

- It's the women without means

that are suffering of the consequences.

- How many you estimate the participant is?

- Oh, no idea.

- But dozens or hundreds. - No, no, no, no.

Perhaps less. I don't know. 10, 20...

- With everything in place, we launched the campaign.

- Bye!

Oh! Yay!

- Whoo-hoo!

- Ireland's one of the last bastions

within the European Union where so-called "good Catholics"

prevent abortion from coming in,

so they are keen to keep it abortion-free,

which, of course, it's not.

When we sailed out,

this was actually front-page news,

so a lot of women found it, and they read about it,

and it started generating e-mails.

- As we come in- - Yeah.

- You should be standing on the front of the boat, waving.

You need to give them a good photograph.

- Okay, good. - That's the picture.

It's very clear what the picture has to be.

- Okay. - Can you see it on TV?

It's a great picture.

- Yeah, okay, good. Great. Any other suggestions?

Should I give one sound bite when we come in...

Just shout one thing?

- I would shout, "I'm taking no questions.

I'll talk to you tomorrow."

I don't think you need to say very much.

"We're here in solidarity with the Irish people."

- Yeah, I think that's the best one, actually.

Okay.

I'm getting nervous, guys.

When we left the Netherlands,

what we didn't have

was the official license for the abortion clinic

in the Netherlands.

However, we thought that that was covered

because we wanted to do

only very early abortions with the abortion pill,

and that is falling outside of the Dutch criminal law.

We had applied for the license anyway

before we left the Netherlands,

but it was still in process,

and we expected it would be granted

before we arrived in Ireland.

I think that was one of the biggest mistakes I made

while this was all playing out

because while we were at sea,

the press published that we didn't have the license,

and they made it into a big political issue.

We knew that it might prevent us

from actually doing abortions in Ireland.

But we decided to continue and sort it out once we arrived.

- For your information there will be a bridge lift for 8:00.

That's one hour from now.

- A bridge lift, 8:00.

Okay. Thank you.

We will be there.

- So, we are in now, I think.

We are there.

- "Get your murder ship out here."

- Have a good journey?

- Yeah, great.

We're now just coming in,

so we'll just come to wait what happens.

We will give a press conference tomorrow,

and you can ask all the questions there.

The reason why we're here

is to support Irish women's right to free choice,

and tomorrow we're going to talk about it much more.

I would like to, tomorrow.

We'll have a press conference tomorrow.

Okay, thank you so much.

- Women On Waves.

Yes. Okay.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I have to ask you a few questions.

Do you know how long she's pregnant?

- You're calling for a friend, right?

You're calling for a friend.

- Did she do a pregnancy test?

Okay.

Three weeks.

Sounds perfect.

- Seems that England is the best option for you.

We also have clinics in Amsterdam,

but that will be about the same price to go there.

- And, of course, we never thought

it would be more than like five...

Even one I would have found, like, very optimistic.

Now we're over 120.

I think we're over, like, almost 130.

- This is the real story.

This is what we're here for.

We came here for these women.

I'm getting frustrated

because I have had about three women asking me,

"if it's only about treatment with pills,

"why don't you just give me the pills?

I can swallow them by myself."

And we cannot do that.

Women On Waves.

- By the time we landed,

there had been so much negative press about the license

that we were forced to say that

we would leave without doing any abortions.

And, um...

You know what the terrible thing is?

We have everything, everything except that license paper.

Everything is there.

- The Irish people have voted no to abortion.

All the referendum have said no to abortion.

Doctors and nurses are supposed to save lives,

not murder babies.

We've got lovely children here.

How would any of you photographers

or media or nurses or doctors

like to be killed in your own mother's womb?

Would you like to be murdered?

Go back to Holland.

- Good morning.

We are here in solidarity with the Irish women

who have been denied their human right.

This is just the first of many trips that we plan to make.

This is the first time that we started this project.

We're running into things that have not been anticipated.

We cannot help it at this moment.

I cannot tell you how much my heart bleeds for this.

The only way to change the situation

is if Irish government is legalizing abortion,

as every country all over the world

where abortion is illegal.

We can never, ever, ever provide enough services

to all these women that are in such desperate need.

Do you really think that

we would have put so much effort in a thing like that?

- Thank you very much.

- Yeah?

- They're a mean bunch.

- Mean bunch.

Did I do all right? - You did fine.

You did exactly right.

- And everybody did really good.

- Or a sandwich?

- I don't want to eat, actually.

Thanks. No, thank you.

Um...

- That's a long pause. (chuckles)

- Well, you know, the, yeah.

- I'm standing onboard The Aurora Right now.

- What the press was doing...

They were really tough that we let women down.

They said we had created hope for women to be helped,

and that we set them up, and I thought that was,

kind of, so unfair.

- "Guilty" is such a strong word,

but feel you a kind of guiltiness

against these women who counted on you?

- What's come out.

- So, are you disappointed you can't fulfill your mission?

- We're doing this because of the women,

not because of my mission.

I, you know, I don't think that's an appropriate question

because there are 45 million abortions

taking place each year.

There's no medical intervention

that has been done more than abortions.

But it's just because it's women, and it's invisible,

and it's just a silent slavery, and they

don't talk about it, but nobody fucking knows.

- Also, the personal experience of abortion.

- No, don't try, it's too easy.

All these hundreds of people that are involved,

they are all doing this with their hearts,

and not because they had an abortion.

I mean, are you going to ask somebody working for

amnesty international whether they have been tortured?

Come on, that's not the issue.

The issue is, do women have really basic human right

to be able to decide

what is happening with their own bodies?

- That was a real bad question to ask.

- Oh, I don't care.

I mean, there's, it's okay.

Shall we go outside and just hand out the pills?

I really would love to do that.

Fuck that. - Go, girl. Go, girl.

- What we didn't realize is that

actually people forget what happened.

The only thing that people remember

is there is this organization,

they have a ship, and they do abortions.

Bye!

The campaign in Ireland put us on the map.

When we came back in the Netherlands, we got

the letter from the Dutch minister of health

that these early abortions

are not covered by the Dutch abortion law

and that we could, indeed, do these early medical abortions

on a ship without a license.

That was the moment that we continued organizing

the next campaign.

- You're called here the doctor of death,

the angel of death, the ship of death.

Doctors are generally associated

with health and curing, making people better,

but here you're associated

with removing the beginning of life.

- And still, my experience as a doctor,

in that sense, is totally different.

It's so clear, if you speak to women,

what is really at stake and what's happening and why.

When I was 8, my mother brought me

to visit a Greenpeace ship.

That moment made such a big impression me

that when I studied medicine, it was always connected

to changing the world and social justice.

When I was at medical school,

I don't know even if I really realized

what it meant to be a doctor.

I just didn't feel at home in a white coat.

There was something really missing,

so I decided to go to art school.

It was evening school because I still,

of course, had the medical school to go to.

What I learned then is to look, really look,

and to go beyond the first possibilities.

And that was so exciting because at that

moment, it was like the whole world broke open.

After medical school, I became an abortion provider,

and then I volunteered at Greenpeace.

I think Women On Waves... It's a very good melding

of the medical, the activism, and the art.

- Welcome, Nazis!

- Welcome, welcome, welcome!

- No, no! Leave her alone!

- Let's go back. We don't want them to jump on.

We don't want them to project on the ship. Come on.

The Polish women's groups had warned us that

there is a very well-organized anti-abortion movement.

But I had never dealt with this kind of aggression.

We have to paint the ship again because we

promised to bring it back in the original state.

- I know Women On Waves from when their boat

appeared in Poland.

I really remember Rebecca being on television,

and she let everyone clearly see

that there are women in Poland that need abortions,

that there are drugs to provoke it,

and this was a symbolic action,

yet with very, very pragmatic effect.

They just came and were absolutely not apologetic that

they are going to provide this service.

I thought it was majorly cool, actually.

- Just get right behind him.

- We're still walking.

- Yeah, oh, man.

I'm so sorry for you.

- Hi, guys. - Hi.

- Good, you're here. Good, you're here.

- We just got egged.

- Hotline number, great, guys.

I love this.

In the three days that we have been here,

we have been insulted, harassed, and intimidated.

- This member of Polish parliament

organizing actions against the ship...

He threatened to photograph women

who may be entering the port,

and we cannot allow it.

- Here we go.

- To the harbor. To the harbor.

- What is really unique about this campaign

was that everybody was talking about it.

The discussion went much more beyond

on the abortion rights and women

and reproductive health, et cetera.

It went about,

"are they allowed within the European Union

to just come to Poland and, you know,

claim and proclaim another values and another opinions

than the 'so-called' Polish society has?"

- We never said that we would do abortions

or that we did do abortions, but every time we sailed out,

all the pills were counted before we were sailing

and after we came back, and then headline news was

"five pills missing, five abortion pills missing."

And so they knew there were abortions happening.

- Okay.

They were really trying to prove

that we did something that was not according to the law,

but they weren't able to do that.

- In many countries where abortion is legal,

in the clinic, women are given pills,

and then the actual abortion, the actual miscarriage,

takes place at home, and it is a standard, routine practice,

and the same happens on the ship.

- Can you read what's on the GPS for me?

- Yes, 54 degrees 59.57 north, 18 degrees 40 east.

- Okay.

Now I give you the pills with some water.

Just from your hands, okay?

It's okay. You can take your time.

Okay.

Okay, so we're still outside territorial waters.

- Yes.

- I am the generation that was raised in oblivion

that abortion does not exist

and doesn't happen in this country,

so it brought back this perspective in the public discourse

that there actually

are some women in Poland that might need abortion

and might be even that desperate

to board the ship and have the services done there.

For me, personally,

it was the inspiration to try to join this organization.

- When we do the next campaign, to Portugal,

we felt more experienced.

We had raised enough money.

The crew was from before,

so we knew when we were going to sail.

We could get the abortion pills.

The clinic was in place.

The local groups were very good in mobilizing.

So we thought, okay, this is not going to be very difficult.

When the ship was on its way, I was already in Portugal.

In the middle of the night,

I got a phone call from the ship's captain that

the Portuguese government had sent two warships

to stop the ship from sailing into national waters.

- It's very clear that the Portuguese government

is violating all international and national agreements.

The ship is being contacted by the Portuguese

marine, asking what its intentions are.

I mean, no ship, this is an officially registered ship.

It's not a threat to the national security of Portugal.

We've always been quite creative in solving all obstacles

that we have faced till now,

so I'm sure we'll come up with something.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

So, what do you think of this, people?

It's like we're at war with the Portuguese government.

Unfortunately, we don't have the weapons and the ships.

- Okay, does everybody know what happened?

That the Portuguese government

doesn't allow the ship in national waters?

A country can only refuse access to national waters

when there is an imminent threat

to the security of this country.

Okay, you know, helping Portuguese women...

Is that an imminent threat to the security of Portugal?

Interesting question.

We're, of course, going to test the waters.

Tomorrow, we go to, go with some of the television channels

to the ship,

and the ship is going to request access again

to the Portuguese waters.

Can we put out our mobile phones?

- It's the hotline.

- Okay. Take it.

- It was the first time that I participated in a campaign,

a real campaign, for women's rights.

We were basically two girls answering the phone,

and we were trained by the Dutch team.

They wanted to go to the boat to have an abortion.

At that point, we couldn't help them

because we couldn't have the boat in.

I think in the beginning we were very pissed off,

thinking the campaign was failing

because the ship couldn't get in,

but at a certain point, we realized that

that was the best thing that could ever happen

because we had media coverage from everywhere,

as though the warship was even more spectacular

than the abortion boat itself.

- Portugal!

- We did bring food, and people visited the ship,

but the piloting boats were not willing

to bring women along.

It was impossible to find a local ship

that was willing to do that.

They were scared of getting arrested.

- Women On Waves.

We have hundreds and hundreds of calls in two weeks.

Basically, all the calls that came in the hotline

were women seeking help.

Eventually, we could see this

as just another medical procedure, but it's not just that

because it's connected to all the representations

that you have of what it means to be a woman,

what it means to be a mother, what is motherhood.

It troubles you because

it can be a lot of questioning about it,

and if you ask someone that just says,

"maybe you can solve this,"

of course, that should be a huge relief.

But it's important because it allows you

to choose the path of your life

and to take your life back

where you had it when you got pregnant.

"You couldn't help them, so what are you doing?"

Well, a big media scene, yes,

and that's very nice to talk about the subject,

but women continue every day to have unwanted pregnancy,

and they cannot wait

for law to change or the boat to come, you know?

So you need an answer immediately.

- Did you discuss the issue of the abortion ship

with the president just now?

- So the decision has been taken

not to allow the ship to port?

- Thank you very much.

- Okay.

- The Navy will board the ship.

- Oh, so it will be seized? - Yes.

- Here's what they want to do...

Delay the process, throw it out,

get it in the courts, and keep the ship out.

- And so we went to court,

and what we heard was that

a judge was actually called by the government

a couple of times,

and so it seems that there was a lot of pressure

put on the judge.

- At that point, we decided to change strategies.

There was now so much evidence that

the pills were safe for women to use on their own

that we decided, if women couldn't get to the ship,

we would help women get the pills directly.

Okay, let's get in.

At that moment, the hotline was not giving any information

about how women can use misoprostol themselves.

But you cannot stop women from accessing something

they have a right to,

so we decided that we would publicly announce

how to do an abortion yourself using misoprostol.

- It was a decision of Rebecca.

It was not a decision of the group to do that

because the groups were very afraid,

because they were doing something illegal.

- Do we have a safety pin?

You will have simultaneous translations.

- Good. Good.

- Aah! Too much.

- No.

- Can it be a little bit less?

- What you see here is different

from what you're going to see on TV.

- She has it too. Okay.

- Ready!

- I was very nervous because

I wasn't quite sure how it would work out

with the law and things.

I hadn't looked into the legal issues there at all.

I just decided to do it.

- Hey, thanks. Bye.

Thank you so much for having us here.

Yeah. Yes, I am.

- How... for how many weeks?

- About 10, 11 weeks. Yeah.

- Congratulations. - I never...

- First child? - Yes, it is.

- I have one with 4 years in the house.

- Oh, that's so nice. - She's big already.

- Oh, yeah. It's nice.

It's very nice. If it's wanted, it's delicious.

Once I told the media that I'd actually had an abortion,

this was turned into kind of this motive story,

and I think I just wanted to show another side,

where you can be pregnant and that you can be a mother

and be supportive of abortion rights.

For me, it's really a very personal thing,

especially now, and I never had that.

Before, I always felt that I want to have it on this

abstract level, that it wasn't about my personal life.

But what's happening now is so much about my personal life.

I feel that this experience of mine

is relevant at this moment.

It was never before.

So it was okay to put forward this different image

of what an abortion-rights activist looks like.

Are you going to fall? Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Women On Waves brought the case

to the European court of human rights,

and we won this court case.

The verdict said that Portuguese government

had violated our freedom to expression by stopping the ship

from entering Portuguese national waters,

so we got 2,000 Euros.

- The campaign had a huge positive impact

in changing the law.

You cannot just attribute to someone that success.

But, of course, the campaign was very, very important.

- The decision to publicly announce

how women can do an abortion themselves with misoprostol

on live television was a very important change

in the strategy because it suddenly meant

that it was out of control of the medical professions,

and that it is something that women can

actually handle themselves and do themselves.

- It was definitely a breakthrough.

It was a breakthrough for Women On Waves to do it,

and nobody has ever done it before.

All of a sudden, very many e-mails started to come,

first from Portuguese women, but later on,

literally from all around the world.

Every story of a woman that writes is different,

and it's very difficult to generalize this experience

because abortion is very common.

It made us realize the power of Internet

and how much can be done

the moment that you start spreading the information

that should have been there already.

- Over the next two years,

I continued to work on the hotline as Women On Waves.

It felt so good when you could tell,

"well, you cannot go to the boats,

but maybe you can buy in the pharmacy this medicine,

"and you can use it this way," and so on.

And I think, from that point,

helping individual women started to be more important,

besides political campaign

or political actions as the boat campaign.

- Just like with any other medical procedure,

of course there is a certain risk,

but you have to see this risk as relative.

It's 1 in 300 women that dies from unsafe abortion,

where it's 1 in 500,000 women

that dies from a safe abortion.

That's way safer than giving birth,

and it's equally safe as a miscarriage.

What you are doing is ethical because

you are giving information to a woman so she can decide,

because it's usually about survival

and not about choosing the better option.

You have to let god and the woman

discuss it between themselves.

- When this was announced, that it would be on our website.

Instructions how to do an abortion yourself.

The pills were shown, it was all over the media.

We could barely manage all the e-mails from women.

Then we thought, "this information is so simple.

Local activists could run their own hotlines."

I wanted to return to South America,

where I'd worked with Greenpeace,

but it was so far to go with the ship,

so when an Ecuadorian youth organization invited us,

we decided to help them open a hotline there.

So, we might want to think about an action...

To launch the hotline... And then the press conference.

I know. They don't come.

- Maybe if we do something amazing they would cover.

- Well, we were thinking in airplane

about hanging a banner from the virgin, or...

- A banner from the virgin? - Yes.

- Yeah, we have to make a big banner for that.

- Big, big, big banner.

- Well, you know how you can get up there, and get...

- No, we can go and see tomorrow.

- Yeah, shall we do sightseeing tomorrow?

It would be so nice to hang it from her hand,

but it's impossible, huh?

- If we can do it, it's the first option.

And the second option is to hang it from here.

- It should be packed here with women to block it.

- Yeah, we should have a lot of women here

to block the entrance.

- No, I have an idea!

The press release is "occupation of the virgin."

We are occupying the virgin with a lot of women,

for a couple of hours.

- That would give a lot of press, really,

for the whole country.

Yeah.

- There are two guards there,

so we'll need some beautiful blondes to distract them.

- They'll take us to jail.

That's for sure.

- Are you sure? - If we stay here.

- Do you think that if you do this,

a lot of people who are on the verge

of saying yes to abortion, that they will say,

"well, if they occupy the virgin, I will say no"?

- I think the virgin is better than the church,

going to the basilica and putting...

- This is a virgin with change in her hands.

It's so nice to make that our symbol.

- Yeah.

- Hola. - Hola.

- Too big that we don't see the...

We can use her as a symbol of womanhood.

- Okay.

When people move beyond the fear of backlash,

they can do actually much more

than they were made to believe.

What I learned

is that you always have to have an

offensive strategy in order to create change

because the fear of backlash is the same as self-censorship.

- I don't know if there's some things that we must

take care of saying when we talk on the hotline.

- Also, we don't know the context here.

- Do you know how much women know

about possibilities to provoke miscarriage,

such as misoprostol?

- Very, very little. - Very little.

So it's also building a network.

- Mm-hmm.

- And is it forbidden to provide information?

- No.

- One thing I do want to bring up, though, about

going to the hospital after,

is that they really can't tell

that you've taken the medications

unless they find the pills.

- I was pushing you, and you got irritated.

Never, ever get irritated with the press.

You will not convince anybody when you're like this.

You know what you do?

You take a deep breath, you smile.

Be sweet. Be soft.

Don't be a butch that is "ba, ba!"

Be lovely. Use that. Seduce.

You have to seduce the people that look at you, okay?

- Can we all pray that it's not going to rain?

- Annemarie does great work.

She's still talking with this policeman.

It's unbelievable.

The policemen didn't see anything.

- Yeah, what did you talk to the cops about for so long?

- I talked about me learning Spanish, mainly,

and what's there to do in Quito,

and where I want to go, and if the beach is nice.

- 62.

- Yeah, those are the calls that happened

when this was turned off.

That's in one hour and a half.

- The Ecuadorian youth group...

Just much more subversive strategies

in reaching out to women.

And we hadn't worked with that before.

It boosted our whole creative approach

to how can you get the information to women,

and that is very interesting and very exciting.

In some of the countries, what happened is that

the anti-abortion groups find out

that women use the misoprostol for medical abortion,

and this first happened in Brazil,

and the Brazilian government

then banned the sales for misoprostol

in the pharmacies.

- It is a question of basic justice.

I find it completely schizophrenic that

you can go in a clinic in Holland, let's say,

or the United States,

and get a pill, go home, take it yourself,

get the same basic information how to do it,

and you cannot provide this service

to a woman in Philippines or in Ireland or in Brazil.

So women would be writing to us and saying,

"could you please help us getting the pill?"

And it's hard to say no to something that

is a very reasonable request, in fact,

because yes, there are pills, and yes, there is no medical

or scientific reason not to give it to you.

There are women that need this pill.

There must be a way to get it to them.

- So Women On Web was created...

A separate sister organization to Women On Waves.

Women On Web is an online service

where a woman can request a medical abortion.

She takes an online consultation with a doctor,

and then a package with the abortion pills

is sent by post to her home address.

Special-trained volunteers then help her through the process

of taking the pills via e-mail.

We have been able to find the legal loopholes

to make this possible.

- Medical abortion is a major political power

in hands of women.

That's why it is considered a revolution.

It's as simple as this...

The government could have stopped the ship

but will never be able to stop the Internet.

- Okay.

- It's not only the controversy of abortion

that creates reactions and attention and discussion.

It's about this other symbolic gesture.

The ship is a symbol of freedom...

Has always been...

But it's been a male domain.

When women take charge,

it somehow triggers the fantasy and hopes of people.

- Everybody's waiting for us,

so we have to say hello to them.

Just a minute.

It's okay.

Now to shore, yeah.

- It is important.

- Okay, hold the boat.

I have two children,

and I know how much it takes to be a good parent,

and if somebody cannot do that or doesn't want to,

the misery that that creates.

I think my fundamental philosophy

is the reduction of suffering,

and I think the right to safe abortion...

It's what it does.

It reduces suffering from those women,

and eventually the whole family, the whole society.

Bye, baby.

- Is that the press boat?

- We are in international waters.

You traveled a long distance,

and if you want to end the pregnancy,

I have a pill for you.

Okay.

- Okay. - Okay.

- The anti-abortion groups had mentioned that

they would release the names and the pictures of women

that would seek help with the ship,

so we set up a structure that there would be

a lot of female volunteers onboard the ship, as well,

and so it would be unclear who were the women seeking help.

It works, huh?

You don't know who it is, huh?

The intent of the law is to guarantee good health care,

but if good health care is not accessible within the law,

then what does the law mean?

So the law changed, but the effort that is needed

to change the law, and the results,

are actually very limited,

so I think that, at this point,

it's much more effective to try to make sure that

women have access to the medicines and information

despite the laws.

We are now targeting places in the world

where the laws are deeply embedded,

and it's too dangerous to do publicity campaigns.

So we go in quietly and train people directly.

In Tanzania, we created this whole training manual

based on dissemination of information

through word of mouth or other means.

- Let me tell you, this is a learning experience

for all of us,

and after these four days, you will become

trainers that can train a lot of local women.

- There had been a lot of countries

where misoprostol has been registered

for the use of postpartum hemorrhage...

So heavy bleeding after giving birth.

So we added the protocol, for prevention

on postpartum hemorrhage using misoprostol.

Also, we taught them how women can do an abortion themselves

with the same pills.

And they were flabbergasted

that there was actually the possibility

to do a safe abortion with a medicine.

- "There is nothing."

- For them it was a very deeply emotional moment

because it was immediately confronted

with all the people that they lost

that perhaps could have used this,

and it's this overwhelmingly sad feeling...

"Why didn't I know this before?"

- Very moving.

Well, okay, it's a prescription medicine,

and that is why there are two pharmacies here.

It will be to make sure...

To get the pharmacies to get the misoprostol.

By teaching the people in the training

to create demand for the pills,

it will stimulate the availability of supplies

without risking legal liability,

because they can always say

it is to prevent women from dying after giving birth.

Hello, pharmacist.

I would like to buy misoprostol.

- What's wrong with you?

- I need to end my pregnancy.

- Ah! - "Ah!"

Okay, so he won't give me, so I will say,

"my sister is going to give birth,

but I live from a village very far away,

and there's four more pregnant women,

so I would need to have at least 20 tablets."

- Because we will not be able to travel here to you again.

- For that...

- Because it's a serious problem

and it's for the well-being of women, I can help.

- No problem. So...

So women will have to come up with stories sometimes

to be able to get the medicines.

- Okay. - Okay.

- Hello. This is Kinga Jelinska speaking,

and there are actually many people

that want to get in touch with you as a distributor.

Is that good?

Oh, wow, wonderful.

I'm glad to hear it.

I am here with a person that has a pharmacy in Congo

and would be really interested to get the drug from you.

Okay, thank you.

- We're setting up a smuggling route here.

Well, it would be good...

Finally a good reason to do it, right?

Instead of guns and diamonds and things, like, you know,

it's better to do it for women's health.

- After the training,

besides continuing to train other people,

they set up a pharmacy that sells misoprostol

and that continues to work till today.

- There's now all these people around the world

that are working to help women

get access to safe abortions with medicines.

- The girls from the hotline in Ecuador

were involved in training in Argentina,

in Chile, in Peru, and even Venezuela,

so they act as trainers and show it in flesh and blood

that you actually can do it yourself.

- In these meetings, people get conscious that

other people are doing the same thing,

and they think, "I'm not alone."

- It's about taking responsibility

and about taking power over one's own life.

I don't think women are so scared to do that, actually.

It might be that the world

is scared of women that are doing that.

- There are also some countries globally

where abortion is "supposedly" legal,

but it's not accessible for women.

These countries, for example, the United States of America.

There are very many women in the United States

that simply cannot afford the services,

and they sometimes write to us and ask for an advice,

and it's a very worrisome trend.

- When you think about it, of course,

you feel little and powerless, of course,

but maybe you also concentrate a lot

on the women that we help,

even though it's just a little drop in the ocean.

- Once we headed back to our mooring place,

there were 30 or 40 policemen.

They turned everything in the boat upside-down,

and I even fought with one of those men.

That's why I have a blue bruise on my arm...

More bruises on my arm.

And they escorted us out of the harbor.

But they were able to launch the hotline.

That's the most important thing.

- If you empower women themselves to do medical abortions,

it will undermine this kind of legal construct

that the anti-abortion groups are putting in place.

But it means that you have to have trust

in individual women.

Women will make it happen.

Women will take control over this.