Sara Barros Leitão in monologue on “spectrum” that hangs in abortion

Segundo Sara Barros Leitão, in an interview with the agency Lusa, this “spect of threat” comes “especially from the right-wing governments, with more pendent for the far right”, because whenever they take possession “one of the things they always want to go back on is reproductive rights”.

“We, alone”, a monologue with text, staging and creation of Sara Barros Leitão, which premieres on September 18 at Theatro Circo, in Braga, results from a desire to work on the theme, “which long ago” the author had, and who decided to do a year before the 20 years of the Law of the Depenalization of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVG) were marked.

To frame the work, the actress and director recalls the year 2002, when she was 11 years old and lived in Maia, a city that hosted a ‘mega trial’, with 43 defendants, among health professionals, pharmacy assistants, a social worker and 17 women accused of abortion. The main defendant, a part-time nurse, would be sentenced to eight years in prison.

In addition to this memory, Sara Barros Leitão was “having clues” that he had to address the issue, because throughout the various pieces he has designed and interpreted about women, including “”Monologist of a Woman Called Mary with Her Patroa”, about the work of maids, he realized that the IVG “is a central issue and a matter of classes”.

“ Whatever the woman's story is, it's a central story in all of us. Whether because we have already done it, or because we have thought to do it, or because we know someone who did it, because we helped someone find someone who did it or because of the “fear of becoming pregnant”, another “transversal” issue for women – the fear that it is “the greatest fear of teenagers” and that it is “a ghost” that hovers over women “from the moment they begin their sexual life or even since they have their first menstruation”, eventually preventing them from “living sexuality in a full way”.

“ Even today with the pill and contraceptives is a fear that hovers over the heads of girls and girls ", stressed.

In the spectacle that he created from the Diaries of the Assembly of the Republic, “Guide to a possible country”, he confronted again with “all the discussions that led to the Law of the Depenalization of the IVG” and, in the last, “Respondents”, about migrations, he found again “important links”.

The issues that dominate “Proclaimers” and “We Alone” – migrations and abortion – support attempts at “macro and micro” social control, “in right-wing speeches, particularly from the far right in Portugal”.

“The macro, from the global perspective of migrants, of the fear of the other, of what will rob us of work; and, in the micro, of what has been the booklet of the extreme right, which is the body of women and their possession”, i.e. “control of the body of women and, therefore, of their reproductive system and pregnancy”, he stressed.

And this “has happened in the right-wing governments, to lean a little further to the far right, because whenever they take possession, reproductive rights are the first things they want to go back on,” said Sara Barros Leitão.

As examples he cited “the absurdity” of the application of moderating rates by the government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho to women who did IVG, because “he could not go back on what was expressed by referendum”, in 2007, and “the position of the candidate of the Liberal Initiative in the last presidential elections, which is very questionable”.

“ So, it is perceived that there is this will to hover and exist in these discourses that we are now hearing”, argued the creator, who defends continuing “there is something strange”, since after almost 20 years of dehumanization of the law of the IVG, “it seems “that there is a spectrum that persists in hovering and threatening this right”.

For this reason, I wanted to do a piece “that could occupy this place of discussion”, “problem the theme”, without “being afraid to bring it on the table”.

Contrary to the strategy of political agendas, in which “when there is some difficult issue to threaten our fundamental rights, it is better not to move or touch”, for “fear of, when opening the box, losing even more rights”, the “place of art is different”, he maintained.

Hence, the creator ‘shoots’ to “We Alone”, “in a perspective of being able to problematize this subject as well”. “Not as resistance that we are ready if anyone wants to go back, but in the perspective that much remains to be done,” he stressed – even because, he stressed, it remains a right “that is not accessible to the vast majority of the population.”.

“There are more than 40% hospitals that are conscientious objectors, there are whole regions that cannot get doctors to guarantee the GVI,” he noted, stressing that in Europe, “the route from Portugal to Spain is the second most used route” for the practice of GVI.

The ten weeks that the Portuguese law determines “are not enough”, he said, arguing that “we need to extend the deadline and remove the GVI from the hospital domain”, among other things.

The place of art, he argued, means “bringing problems to discussion and not just as a reaction”.

Sara Barros Leitão therefore expects the play “We Alone” to “project for the future and ensure better reproductive rights for everyone”, giving as an example of social discrimination, the “externalization of GVI in the private”, without forgetting “how much this costs the State”, nor the reality of, in many cases, there being “who goes to Spain abortion because the deadline is longer” than ten weeks.

“ And when Spain goes pay and pays well”, he added. Because abortion continues to “be a matter of class”.

“With this government, this theory of ‘health tourism’ and the agenda against immigrants has caused many migrant women to have no follow-up on their reproductive rights. And therefore, they cannot have access to IVG in Portugal,” he stressed, recalling that they are concerned with “fundamental rights issues that cannot reach everyone for political and class issues”.

“ Of course, we are talking about poor migrants and the ‘intraductions that have been put to these women to enter health services’.

Moreover, he goes on to say, “it was a matter of class that took so long to discuss the GVI in Portugal”, because “who had money easily went abroad to make an GVI”.

The creator also recalled that in the post-25 April there was “all the possibilities” to resolve the issue of abortion, alluding, in particular, to a UDP project to be included in the Constitution. “And it could have been so good if it had passed,” he said.

Sara Barros Leitão recalled the year 1979, “with democracy already consolidated and with PREC [Revolutionary Process in Course] already resolved”, when journalist Maria Antónia Palla went to court accused by the Public Prosecutor of inciting crime and indecent assault, for having conducted a report entitled “An abortion is not a crime”.

As well as the criminal case which, in the same year, sat in the defendants' bank, in the Court of the Boa-Hora, in Lisbon, a young woman of 22 years, accused of abortion by anonymous complaint.

“It’s bizarre how this happens already in democracy. It is the same thing that today a journalist is being sued for making a play on drug trafficking ", defended, remembering that both the journalist and the young woman ended up acquitted.

From the history of the struggle for the decriminalization of the IVG, Sara Barros Leitão also recalled the manifesto written by the journalist and activist for the rights of women Maria Antónia Fiadeiro, launched in Portugal in 1979 by the National Commission for the Legalization of Abortion (CNLA), which gathered close to three thousand signatures of women who publicly admitted to having had an abortion.

“ I am convinced that it took until 2007 [to get the Law of the decriminalization of the IVG] because in the political class and in the Portuguese elite this reality was assured and resolved through money – going to London or Italy or Spain, or even here, paying anesthesiologists doctors. [...] The bourgeois women always managed to have access [to abortion] if they paid for it”.

As the “class issue was assured, it was not necessary to bring this matter up. It is always poor women who suffer even more from everything, especially their reproductive rights”.

After the premiere at Theatro Circo, where it is on stage for the following two days, the monologue “We Alone” continues on tour, to Lamego (26 September), Matosinhos (09 and 10 October), Loulé (22 October), Ilhavo (07 November), Espinho (20 November) and Fafe (27 November). On October 16 you will be in a place “which is still a secret”.

In 2027, there will be recitations in Funchal (05 and 6 February), Coimbra (02 April), Pombal (17 April) and Viseu (23 April).