Nani Afrida, Jakarta – For thousands of Indonesian women, abortion is still viewed as the only way to solve the problems surrounding pregnancies outside marriage or financial stresses from keeping the baby.

"I had an abortion a few days ago and honestly, I feel so guilty," Elli, 22, told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview.

Elli's boyfriend, with whom she has been sexually active for three years but is not married, refused to have the baby. After graduating from a private university in Jakarta several months ago, her boyfriend could not find work and money was an issue.

"My family never condoned me having the baby. That option was completely unacceptable. It would have been humiliating and people would have mocked us. The best thing we could do was let this baby go," Elli said.

Elli and her boyfriend panicked when they discovered she had been pregnant for about two months, so they sought information from friends about a clinic in Mangga Dua, North Jakarta, that performed illegal abortions. She paid one million rupiah for the "service".

"A midwife carried out the process. I was terribly afraid but I had to do it. We received a cheap price because my pregnancy was still in the first trimester," Elli said.

Ferly, a 31-year-old married woman, admitted she had an abortion after her family planning program failed.

"I was using pills while on the family program, but to my surprise they failed. I was pregnant with another child when my first son was only five-month-old," she said. To undergo an abortion was a difficult decision for her and plagued her sleep.

Tania (not her real name) has had three abortions and claims she doesn't feel guilty anymore. "I felt guilty after the first abortion but I felt normal after the following two," Tania, a sex worker from a small nightclub in North Jakarta, said.

"I fell pregnant because I did not take precautions during sex. They were all accidental and resulted in having to see the abortion doctor several times," she told the Post.

One of her friends, also a sex worker, informed her that a doctor at a clinic in Salemba, Central Jakarta, could abort her pregnancy.

The clinic, she said, never asked for any documents from their patients before the operation, but simply required patients sign a risk waiver to ensure any injuries incurred were not the responsibility of the doctor. The prices range from between Rp 1,5 million to Rp 15 million, depending how far along the pregnancy is.

"Finding a doctor willing to carry out the abortion is easy," Tania said.

The National Family Planning Coordinating Body (BKKBN) and the Indonesian Planned Parenthood Association (PKBI) data showed approximately 2 million illegal abortions are carried out each year.

Chairman of the Indonesian Doctor Association (IDI) Fachmi Idris said abortion was illegal in Indonesia except when the pregnancy posed a serious risk to the mother, but the decision really came down to the ethics of the doctor.

The association, he said, never allowed its members to conduct illegal abortions, instead advising people to report to official clinics. "In the past, doctors have been caught performing illegal abortions," he said.

Fachmi said the government had opened a clinic in Raden Saleh, Central Jakarta, for women to legally abort their baby if they have a compelling reason.