Health needs of women victims of sexual violence in search for legal abortion

OBJECTIVE: to understand the health needs that emerge on the path followed toward legal abortion by women who have suffered sexual violence. METHOD: an exploratory, descriptive and qualitative study, whose theoretical framework was the conceptual field of Collective Health, based on the Marxian conception of needs. The study participants were ten women who requested legal abortion at a reference service located in São Paulo. A semi-structured interview script was used for data collection. The data were submitted to content analysis with the support of the WebQDA software. The analytical categories used were health needs and gender. RESULTS: despite the fact that abortion was identified as a primary need, the data revealed other needs felt by women, related to the health-disease process and with an emphasis on mental health, work, financial situation, the exercise of motherhood, access to information, autonomy, sisterhood and welcoming in the health services. CONCLUSION: the properly human needs were in greater evidence in the study, surpassing merely biological needs. The results point to the importance of co-responsibility of the health services with women, aiming to minimize vulnerabilities and to effectively implement reproductive rights.