The banner strikes again! This time, the banner was flown from the municipal building of the coastal city of Machala. The action, which took place in the central plaza of the city, was accompanied by an awareness action in which a woman dressed as Death raised awareness about the realities of unsafe abortion.

On Friday, June 27th, the press had gathered around a woman dressed as Death standing next to a coffin of a supposed victim of unsafe abortion and a banner reading "Not of the State, Not of the Church, My Body is Mine". That seemed to be enough to raise a fuss and get the tv, radio, and newspaper crews to show up, but just as the press gathered around the woman, the huge banner announcing the hotline was unfurled from the balcony of the municpal building just accross the street! This gave the perfect opportuinity to announce the hotline to the Machala press. Among the onlookers, a lively debate ensued as well. The banner was then brought from the balcony and laid out on the plaza, and flyers were passed out to the crowd gathered around. The interest from the press and the articles that followed were very positive.

Machala is a medium sized costal city in the banana producing region of El Oro, and has an extremely conservative mayor. The mayor had a rough day, starting with the banner hanging from the municipal building, and continuing that afternoon with the 2nd annual Machala GLBT Pride parade. A group of local and international pro-choice activists and members of the Women's Movement of El Oro showed up to support the parade and flyer for the hotline. Although the parade had a permit, the mayor ordered police to block it parade from leaving, but the people walked around the police barricade and started the parade anyway, and due to the public support the parade was allowed to continue (the mayor tried, and failed, to stop last year's parade in the same manner). Interestingly, the opinions of the mayor do not seem to reflect the opinions of the town's residents.

Unfortunately, we have no photos from the workshop due to the wishes and needs of the doctors to remain anonymous.

The first part of the day involved a discussion about the experiences of the medics around abortion and how miscarriages in progress are treated in the hospitals where they work, and concrete situations they had treated. At first, the participants seemed reluctant to talk about even the situations in which abortion is legal in Ecuador.

Following this introduction, Dr. Gunilla Kleiverda from Women on Waves gave a talk about the ethical and medical responsibilities of health professionals, and asked if they would like more and current information on medical abortion, as a way to perform therapeutic abortions and treat miscarriages in progress in their hospitals. Instantly, their reluctance to talk about the subject all but disappeared and they were eager to become better trained to be able to perform these functions more effectively in their workplaces.

Gunilla then talked about how to use Misoprostol, and its many uses, and also how to perform a vacuum aspiration.

After that, Gunilla and Cecilia Costa talked about the importance of doctors and the authority that they have in the struggle to legalize abortion. Cecilia talked about the importance of the doctors organization, Medicos pela Escolha, in the legalization of abortion in Portugal.

In general, the doctors expressed their thanks for the workshop, and said that they wished that there were more workshops like this in Ecuador for doctors to be better informed. A few exchanged contacts and expressed interest in organizing together.

All in all, it was a very positive event and also an excellent opportunity for doctors to not only be informed but make contact with each other to continue these discussions.

In the morning, a team of activists participated in a procession through Quito that was part of the Inti Raymi Equinox festival, a traditional Andean spiritual festival. Then at night, in the polar opposite environment, we held a festive street parade through Mariscal, the district that is central to Quito´s nightlife.

Activists had been invited to participate in the Inti Raymi festival, an indiginous festival focusing on traditional knowledge. The event started with a street procession, with many participating groups and traditional leaders. The activists from the Coordinadora and Women on Waves gave out flyers during the procession and people were very interested, often asking for more flyers to pass out in their communities.

The procession ended up in the Plaza de San Francisco, where there were speeches and presentations to begin what is a 3 day event of workshops and ceremonies. During the opening speeches, Monica, an activist from the coordinadora, was invited up onto the stage to present the hotline to the crowd! Later, she was interviewed by Argentine documentary filmakers about the situation of women´s right to an abortion in Ecuador.

In the evening, the Coordinadora mobilized people to meet on a busy street corner in the Mariscal, the entertainment district, notorious for bars, discoteques, and streets filled with people.

We walked through the streets of Mariscal holding banners and giving out flyers, and dancing to the beat of the batucada, the drumming group that accompanied us during the march. Nancy was tireless with the megaphone, going into the bars and restaurants talking about the need for safe abortion, and even getting up into the city buses, where she had a captive audience! People were very interested and receptive to the procession that livened up even the bustling Mariscal night.

Over all, it was a very busy but productive day. The positive reception that we got at both of these events make us realize that this is an important issue in many many lives, and even though the press is and the dominant political currents are strongly pro-life, this does´t truly reflect the public opinion.

Everyone was excited by the success of the banner drop at the Virgin, and wanted to do another audatious visibility action as soon as possible. All eyes in Ecuador were focused on the big football game against Columbia. Where else to go and be seen than the stadium?

The entire city, even the entire country, was electrified over the upcoming match. Now one was talking about anything else, and it seemed like 2 out of 3 people were wearing a yellow football jersey. If we could do something at the stadium, we would be visible to tens of thousands of people in person, and there was the possibility of getting on national live tv that could not be passed up!

We divided into teams, and while some people went at the crack of dawn to stand in line with the thousands of fans to get tickets, while others, with lightning speed, prepared the signs for the stadium. There were painted banners, as well as huge pieces of cardboard, each painted with a single letter or number, that together would spell out, "ABORTO SEGURO 099004545" if held facing one way, and "Sí Se Puede" if held facing the other. "Sí se puede" is a phrase not only used to root for your team at the game, but also in popular and social movements throughout Central and South America, and means, "Yes, we can".

Despite long hours in the stadium in the pouring rain waiting for the game to start, and that the security guards said that only football themed banners were allowed, the number was seen by tens of thousands in the stadium, and it was a truly original way to get the message out.

Today the help telephone number was launched at the hill overlooking Quito. The night was short, everybody were busy with preparations till late. We had to get up early to finish the tasks and then we went to the Panecillo. Everyone was curious to see what the action might bring.

9 am: The day started off with a press symposium organized by the Coordinadora Juvenil por la Equiad de Genero (Coordinating Group of Youth for Gender Equity), which was attended by about 25 journalists from different print and radio publications. The aim of this forum was to outline the arguments for safe abortion without the discourse being shaped in contrast to the pro-life agenda, and to examine the ways in which the press could look critically at pro-life arguments and write articles reflecting the realities of abortion and the women who decide to have abortions. The symposium was a unique opportunity to specifically give journalists the tools to write fair and balanced articles on themes related to abortion and to critically examine the current debate (or lack thereof) around the issue.

The forum began with a panel discussion. The panelists were Fernando López (moderator), dean of Social Communications in the Central University of Ecuador, Cecilia Costa, of Women on Waves, who talked about the role of the press in the Portugal campaign and in civil society, Hernán Reyes, from the Andean University Simon Bolivar, talking about the influence of the mass media in the present day conservativism, Virginia Gomez, talking about the situation of abortion in the discussions of the rewriting of the Ecuadorean constitution, and finally Ana Vera of the Coordinadora Juvenil, who talked about the ways that women are organizing for abortion rights.

Following the panel discussion, the journalists were told that there was a surprise activity, and that they would have to take a bus to get there. They had no idea what was waiting for them. Upon boarding a chartered bus, they were told about an action to launch a new safe abortion hotline in Ecuador. To their surprise, they ended up high on the hillside overlooking Quito, at La Virgin del Panecillo, just in time for the banner action (see below).

Following the banner action the journalists returned ...

A group of activists swarmed the city and sprayed the hotline number wherever they could. They worked all night. Next morning before 7.30 the first woman called for help!!!

New action plans, now there is no ship to launch the hotline.
After all, the ship could only have helped a few women, and the most important aspect of the campaign always was the helpline, which will be in place here so that women will still get help after the campaign ends. The question remained: How can we launch the hotline without the attention that the ship would bring?

We held trainings in which the Ecuadorean activists were trained to answer the hotline and deal with the press.

They got overfed with information about Cytotec, scientific publications, and World Heath Organisation publications.

In the hotline training, Gunilla, a gynecologist, answered medical questions, and Cecilia, who participated in the Portugal campaign and who continued the work of the hotline there after the ship left, gives examples of the type of questions the hotline gets. The local hotline team shared their ideas and concerns about the local situation, legal questions, and ideas for making the hotline more inclusive of other concerns that people might phone with.

Meanwhile, in the other room, the press team discussed strategies and prepared answers to probable questions that would come up in reaction to the hotline and the actions.

Up on the roof, the others are making a huge banner in the meantime.

We arrived!! After a long and sleepless flight, we arrived in Quito. However, there was no time to rest. That same afternoon we met with the local activists to start making the plan of action for the week. Since there is no ship, how are we going to have a successful hotline launch?

Getting Acquainted and Making Plans

We got off the plane after an 18 hour flight, exhausted but excited to have arrived. Margreet was celebrating the longest birthday of her life, which began with a champaign toast at midnight on the plane, and would last about 30 hours, since we had changed so many time zones along the way. Of course there wasn't much time for celebration, since despite having gotten almost no sleep on the trip we had a meeting in the early afternoon with the local activists. We had the meeting in the CEPAM, or Ecuadorean Center for the Promotion and Action of Women, a huge old building where women have been managing women-focused projects for over 30 years.

Finally we get to meet our Ecuadorean counterparts!! After doing a round of introductions, we already start planning out the week, knowing we had to act quickly to take advantage of the short time we have together. It was decided to have the hotline launch on Tuesday, right after a press symposium that the local youth group had organized, and that there would be a stenciling campaign Monday night. We also set up Monday as a training day for the press contact people and the hotline team. Finally, our brains over-saturated with information and ideas and lack of oxygen due to the high altitude, we called the meeting to a close and headed back to the hostal to try to stay awake for long enough that we would get a regular night's sleep and adjust to local time.