Scenes : On the Front Lines: Vignettes From Four Nations

In every abortion, of course, there is a baby that, for whatever reason, will go unborn. The word (from the Latin aboriri : to miscarry) covers both the furtive operation carried out in a dirty cellar in the heart of teeming Cairo and what a poor, illiterate Latin American peasant woman pathetically prays will happen when she quaffs a dose of herbal tea.

Here are Times reports from several nations:

Egypt

The Egyptian woman had been married previously and had two teen-age children. She wed a second husband who had a developmentally disabled child from a previous marriage, plus a history of birth defects in his family. When she became pregnant, she feared for the baby’s health.

“I went to my doctor, I told him, ‘I’m older now, I have a career, I can’t have another child now,’ ” she recalled. “He told me, ‘This is not a reason. I will not do it.’ Then I told him the truth, about my fears. And he said, ‘OK, come to the hospital tonight at midnight and tell them you are already bleeding, having a miscarriage. I will meet you there.’ ”

So, said the woman, “I had an abortion in the best hospital in Heliopolis,” a wealthy Cairo suburb.

In the Arab world’s most populous country, Islamic strictures prohibit most abortions. The well-to-do can always pay doctors to decide that an exemption is warranted on health grounds. Those with fewer resources go to secret clinics, some housed in filthy basements. Most are staffed only with a single doctor, who acts both as surgeon and anesthetist, and a few nurses. An abortion costs $65 to $85.

“Of course they are not clean. So always, always infections happen after the abortion,” said one woman who counsels others on family planning issues.