The “friend who has already aborted”: A look at shared experiences in a virtual community

Abstract

The Brazilian research on abortion has pointed to the existence of a paradoxical dynamic about the event. If, on the one hand, it is a ta-boo subject surrounded by stigma, evidencing an apparent social invisibility of this practice, on the other hand, it is a common event in the reproduc-tive life of women of all social classes, races, and religions, showing a culture of broad sharing of knowledge and practice on the subject. This paper is about the character of the “friend who has already aborted”, which appears in narratives about the abortion experience shared publicly on an online platform, understood here as a virtual ex-change community on the subject, maintained by the international NGO Women on Web. A virtual ethnography revealed that this person gains prom-inence in the narratives and the universe of the in-terpersonal social networks mobilized by women in its abortive course, relationships that stimulate reflection on the place of solidarity among women in the collectivization of knowledge and strategies and the production of a common resistance in the context of clandestinity and stigmatization un-derpinning the theme of abortion in the country.