Missed Your Period? Don’t Want to be Pregnant? There is an App for That
by Karen Gardiner
December 3, 2012
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/29/missed-your-period-there-is-medication
Via www.ipas.org
“To avoid judgement and fear, it is always useful step into the shoes of another person. I invite you into mine.”
So begins the journey of a 19-year-old Mexican named Claudia, protagonist of an inventive computer game.
¿No Te Baja? which translates as Missed Your Period? makes use of bright colors, engaging cartoon characters and relatable, non-technical, language to inform and guide users through the steps they can take to terminate a pregnancy using Misoprostol. The website takes the form of an interactive, Choose Your Own Adventure style game, where users click through to different scenarios that change according to their own personal situation and decisions.
Misoprostol, a drug used to treat ulcers, is easily available for purchase throughout Mexico, and, unlike in the United States, does not require a prescription. Use of Misoprostol to terminate pregnancy is widespread in parts of Mexico where abortion is illegal, but pharmacy workers often lack the knowledge of how the drug should correctly be administered — and criminalization means that helpful information is scarce.
Although abortion of up to 12 weeks of pregnancy is available on demand in Mexico City, the situation is quite different in the rest of the country. In fact, Mexico City’s 2007 legalization of abortion prompted a backlash from 17 other states, which passed amendments stating that life begins at conception, ushering in a much stricter enforcement of already existing anti-abortion laws.
Users of No Te Baja, through the actions of Claudia and her boyfriend, go through each detailed step of the process of self-administering a medication abortion: from the initial pregnancy test to the decision whether or not to involve the partner; the signs and symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy to calculating gestational age to indicate whether or not use of Misoprostol will be effective-and if it will be safe to self-administer.
The game advises that Misoprostol can be purchased in most pharmacies and that it may be sold under various other commercial names including Cytotec, Cyrox, and Tomispral. Users receive detailed information on how to administer Misoprostol through the mouth or the vagina, noting that, in the event of having to seek medical attention, medical personnel would likely be able to detect the remnants of the pills inside the vagina- important information for women living in areas where they can be prosecuted for inducing an abortion.
The central Mexican state of Guanajuato, where hospital staff report suspicious miscarriages to the police, is one such place. The Nation described the state’s approach to dealing illegal abortion in a January 2012 article by Mary Cuddehe:
“The state has opened at least 130 investigations into illegal abortions over the past decade, according to research by women’s rights groups, and fourteen people, including three men, have been criminally convicted. Given Mexico’s 2 percent national conviction rate during its most violent period since the revolution, that’s a successful ratio.”
No Te Baja doesn’t end with the final dosage of medication: users (and Claudia) are informed of what signs to look out for that would require medical attention, and of how to tell if the abortion is incomplete. The final stages of the game offer information on how to avoid another unplanned pregnancy with detailed descriptions of different methods of contraception.
European Pro-Choice Network 