Though abortion is legal in Guam up to 13 weeks of pregnancy, and later in certain cases, the last doctor who performed abortions left Guam in 2018. In isolated Guam, abortion is legal and nearly impossible to get:
HAGATNA, Guam — For decades, the Pregnancy Control Clinic, tucked inside a squat, beige building around the corner from a bowling alley, handled most of the abortions on Guam, a tiny U.S. territory 1,600 miles south of Japan.
Forces on both sides of the abortion debate say that the island of 154,000 people is on track to become the purest example of what life would be like under a near-total ban. More than a dozen states have banned most abortions, forcing women there who seek to terminate pregnancies to travel elsewhere, sometimes at great cost and risk to their health. But none is as isolated as Guam.
As the head of the Guam Nurses Association, Leon Guerrero testified in opposition to the 1990 ban, which would have made it a crime to perform, undergo or seek an abortion, except in some medical emergencies, or to encourage women to have abortions. A federal court ruled that the law was unconstitutional and blocked the territorial government from enforcing it, but it remains on the books.
Abortion has long been a taboo topic in Pacific island communities; about 80% of Guam’s inhabitants are Catholic, reflecting the island’s Spanish colonial past. Last summer, anticipating that the Supreme Court would soon reverse the Roe v. Wade decision, the archdiocese distributed a pastoral letter to be read aloud in its two dozen churches: “Hope is rising across our country that the scourge of abortion will be significantly curtailed.”
The goal, they said, was to recruit women who had abortions to attend a confidential counseling retreat sponsored by an international religious group that opposes abortion.Advocates of abortion rights fear what will happen on Guam — which has high rates of sexual assault and maternal mortality — if access to abortion pills is effectively blocked.
Happy Tingson was working as a hotel housekeeper in 2015 when she became pregnant. She told only two people: her best friend, Rhea Patino, and her boyfriend at the time.
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