Honduran women risk death and imprisonment as they try to access reproductive care

At her home in El Progreso, this Honduran woman told the story of how she was criminalized for having an abortion in her late twenties.

Sitting in the sweltering heat outside her rented metal hut in a dusty neighbourhood in El Progreso, a Honduran woman tells the story of how she wound up handcuffed in the hospital.

In 2010, when she was in her late 20s, she began feeling unwell with abdominal pain. She went to the local hospital and was sent to the bathroom to take a urine test. But instead of urine, she saw blood. Later, she would realize that she’d had a miscarriage, but in that moment, she didn’t even know that she was pregnant.

Rather than offering compassion, she said hospital staff accused her of having an abortion – which is illegal in Honduras – and called the police.

“I didn’t do anything,” she told officers when they arrived. But no one believed her, and instead, she was handcuffed so tightly her hands turned purple. One police officer told her she could get a lengthy prison sentence, which sent her spiralling into a panic, thinking of her young daughter growing up without her.

Over the next seven days, the young mother lay in a hospital bed with her hands bound. “They treated me badly, like an animal,” she said, remembering that nurses and doctors called her names, including telling her she was a cow.

The Globe and Mail is not naming the woman, or several other sources in this article, as they fear retribution from members of their community.

Abortion laws in Latin America

CUBA

MEXICO

Honduras

VENEZ.

COLOMBIA

BRAZIL

PERU

Map key

BOLIVIA

According to state

On request

(gestational limits vary)

CHILE

To preserve health

ARGENTINA

To save a person’s life

Prohibited altogether

the globe and mail, Source: center for reproductive rights

Abortion laws in Latin America

CUBA

MEXICO

Honduras

VENEZ.

COLOMBIA

BRAZIL

PERU

Map key

BOLIVIA

According to state

On request

(gestational limits vary)

CHILE

To preserve health

ARGENTINA

To save a person’s life

Prohibited altogether

the globe and mail, Source: center for reproductive rights

Abortion laws in Latin America

CUBA

MEXICO

Honduras

VENEZ.

COLOMBIA

BRAZIL

PERU

Map key

BOLIVIA

According to state

On request

(gestational limits vary)

CHILE

To preserve health

ARGENTINA

To save a person’s life

Prohibited altogether

the globe and mail, Source: center for reproductive rights

Many countries across Latin America heavily restrict access to abortion. There are some outliers: In 2022, Colombia decriminalized abortion, and the procedure is also permitted in Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba. But in El Salvador, for instance, abortion is illegal under all circumstances, and some women have been sentenced to decades in prison on related charges. Nicaragua also has a total ban on abortion.

In Honduras, abortion is illegal in all instances, including rape or incest. If a woman has an abortion, she can be charged and imprisoned for up to six years. Anyone found to have helped her, such as health professionals who perform or co-operate in the procedure, is also liable to penalty.

Pushing back against these restrictions is a difficult fight in Honduras: The rejection of a woman’s right to choose is consistent with the way women are treated more broadly in the staunchly religious and conservative country, where violence against women is so common it is estimated a woman is killed every day.

In 2009, then-president Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a coup by Honduras’s army with the support of powerful political elites. Religious leaders took on prominent positions in politics and condemned emergency contraception – also known as the morning-after pill.

Officials misleadingly called it an “abortion pill,” a description more accurately used for different medication that terminates a pregnancy. An amendment in 2021 enshrined the total ban on abortion into the constitution. (The Honduran embassy in Ottawa did not respond to a request to comment.)

In 2019, Lawyers Without Borders Canada – a non-governmental organization that helps vulnerable people access legal representation and works with civil society organizations – started supporting Honduran lawyers and activists who took up the fight for sexual and reproductive rights.

Their work has included helping local lawyers build individual cases and bring them to court. As well, the organization supported Honduran lawyers who brought a constitutional challenge, on behalf of women’s organizations and civil society groups, against the abortion ban, which was argued before the Supreme Court.

When it comes to protecting women’s reproductive rights around the world, advocates and activists in Honduras are at the forefront of the battle, says Pascal Paradis, the executive director for Lawyers Without Borders Canada. “It’s a difficult fight. You are facing very distinct sectors of society that are very conservative, that are reacting strongly to this – the religious institutions, some political parties – so it’s risky.”

Canada has had long-time commitments to Latin America and the Caribbean, including $30.8-million in international assistance from all aid channels to Honduras in 2021-22, according to Global Affairs Canada. Part of that funding goes toward working with partners in the region to address social, economic and security issues.

Through Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, which was unveiled in 2017, the federal government sends funding abroad to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, including sexual and reproductive health and rights.

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In order to understand the consequences of the abortion ban in Honduras, and what impact Canada’s support can have, The Globe travelled across the country to interview women who have had an abortion, advocates who have been fighting for reproductive rights and lawyers who represent women who have been criminalized for having an abortion.

Most starkly, the ban means that women and girls turn to dangerous and unsafe methods to terminate unwanted pregnancies, putting them at risk of complications and death. They also avoid doctors when they need medical care, fearful of arrest. Some buy pills on the black market or drink pesticides in an attempt to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

Since Xiomara Castro – the wife of the deposed Mr. Zelaya – became the country’s first female president in 2022, there has been hope things will change. On March 8, International Women’s Day, Ms. Castro announced an end to the country’s ban of the morning-after pill.

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However, rights groups have called on her to fulfill her campaign promise to legalize abortion in the cases of rape, risk to the pregnant woman’s life or risk of severe fetal impairment, and to go further to decriminalize abortion in other circumstances.

Mr. Paradis said what happens with reproductive rights in Honduras is important to watch, because the loss of rights in one jurisdiction can inspire those who are attempting to take them away elsewhere, including in the United States and Canada.

“We are losing ground, and it may have a trickle-down effect,” he says. “So every win makes us stronger in securing sexual and reproductive rights all around the world.”

In Tegucigalpa, the sprawling capital of Honduras, a security guard stood outside a communal office for advocates working to advance women’s rights. Even on a Saturday, the office was buzzing with activists who share the space.

One of the women sat at a desk in a small room as a fan worked to keep her cool. She said she started her organization to help advance women’s rights in 2015 after being shunned by her own church for speaking out about reproductive rights. Then, after a religious leader publicly denounced her and her colleagues as “heretics,” she said she received more than a 100 death threats. Someone wrote “feminazis” on the window of her office, and later a large rock was hurled through the window, shattering the glass while she was inside.

None of that, however, has stopped her.

“We are committed to this struggle,” she said.

As well as fighting to get the morning-after pill legalized, this year her organization has supported a number of women who have been criminalized for having an abortion. In one case, a 17-year-old was falsely accused of having the procedure and was not declared innocent until seven years later – making it impossible for her to get a job in the meantime.

“The system stole the best years of her youth,” she said.

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Doctors and nurses are the ones who usually call the police and media when they suspect a woman has induced an abortion, she said. When the police arrive, they’re then allowed to come in and arrest the woman.

Human Rights Watch released a report in 2019 that cited a local non-governmental organization’s estimate that between 50,000 and 80,000 covert abortions are performed in Honduras every year. How many women die during the procedure is unclear.

The report, citing data from Honduras’s health secretary, said in 2017 more than 8,600 women were hospitalized for complications from abortion or miscarriage. That same data showed that only one of the country’s 23 maternal deaths that year was caused by an abortion, but Human Rights Watch said that number could be higher because it doesn’t take into account women who died while trying to keep their abortions secret from authorities.

“What happens is that women who want to stop a pregnancy, they go to places to hide. However, the lack of information, the lack of education in sexual rights and sexual education, makes them vulnerable to places that are very dangerous for them,” said another activist in Tegucigalpa.

She said if women and girls in cities have an unwanted pregnancy, they can turn to the black market for reproductive medication, but in rural areas, there’s no such access. As a result, the activist said some rural women and girls take pesticides to cause an abortion, and have died doing so.

Some pregnant women, she added, fatally poison themselves on purpose. “When they have no alternatives and when they have no access to justice at all, that’s what they do. They either end their lives – and this is something that has been happening more and more recently – or they leave the country.”

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A 33-year-old woman in Tegucigalpa said she needed to find the abortion pill after she became pregnant under impossible circumstances.

The mother of one said she couldn’t have another child because her partner, who was emotionally and psychologically abusive, didn’t have a job – and she had doubts about their future.

She started looking for abortion pills online and found a phone number for someone who sold them. But when she made the call, the person on the other end began verbally abusing her for wanting an abortion. It had been a trap. “I blocked the number and I never contacted them again,” she said.

A friend told her about an organization called Women on Web, which uses its website to send women medication in countries where it is banned.

This option came with challenges, however. She would need to ask a friend in Europe to pay for the pills since she didn’t have an international bank account, and she’d need to collect them in person from customs officials near the airport.

Nonetheless, she put in an order for misoprostol, a medication that can induce an abortion, but also is used to treat stomach ulcers. When she went to the customs office, an agent opened her package before handing it over and saw the pills. He began questioning her about what they were for. She told him she lived in a rural area and her grandmother needed them for her ulcers.

“I thought that maybe they were going to call the police, but after an hour of talking to the officer, I convinced him and they let me go.”

She paid more than US$100 for the pills and another US$120 to pick them up. For anyone in Honduras, she said, that’s a lot of money. Luckily, she had savings.

She was also fortunate in how quickly she was able to access the pills. She had a friend who could not find any until she was more than four months pregnant. An abortion at that stage was a traumatic experience for her friend.

“Every woman knows another woman who has done it.”

Despite how prevalent abortions are in the country, she says women are left with the feeling that they have committed a sin. She wishes that they didn’t have to carry that emotional burden.

“Sometimes, the most humane decision that you can take for yourself, and for that embryo that is inside yourself, is to not have the baby.”

Sandy Cabrera Arteaga, a 23-year-old reproductive-rights advocate who works as a consultant with Accion Joven, a Honduran human-rights organization, has spent years fighting for women’s rights and sexual education.

She said that many people in power deliberately confuse emergency contraception with the abortion pill, which is used to terminate pregnancies. Because of this, she said, women searching for abortion medication on the black market can end up with the morning-after pill, which is only effective at preventing pregnancy and not for inducing abortion. The World Health Organization recommends taking the morning-after pill within five days after intercourse but says it is more effective when taken sooner.

“Some people sell [the abortion pill] on the internet or Whatsapp. But you don’t know what you are buying,” said Ms. Cabrera Arteaga. “That’s a very dangerous thing.”

She said because of misinformation and a lack of education, many women and girls don’t realize what the consequences could be. Ms. Cabrera Arteaga said a bill to introduce sexual education into schools has been passed by Congress but has not yet received final approval.

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The Honduran woman in El Progreso, who’d been handcuffed in the hospital, was released after a week and went home. She said she wasn’t given any information about the legal process that would ensue, however, so she didn’t realize she was required to go to court every week to prove she hadn’t left the community while awaiting a trial.

In 2015, five years after her initial arrest, she was arrested again for failing to comply, said Karol Bobadilla, the legal team co-ordinator for Optio, a non-profit that helps remove barriers to reproductive rights in Central America.

Ms. Bobadilla said her organization, alongside Somos Muchas – a coalition of Honduran activist groups – published research in 2019 detailing the cases of women who were criminalized after having an obstetric emergency. They found 47 women and sought to follow their cases, including the woman from El Progreso.

Ms. Bobadilla learned that, when the woman was brought to the police station for not performing her weekly check-ins, media were present and reported her accused crime as if it had just happened. Neighbours who saw the news asked her mom if it was true that she had an abortion. While her mother told them it wasn’t, she was left shaken and scared of what people would do if they believed that.

From 2015 until 2019, before Optio and Somos Muchas provided the Honduran woman with support, there were constant delays in the legal process. During that period, she was terrified of the police and thought often of ending her life.

More than 10 years after she was initially accused, in the spring of 2021, the country’s Public Ministry finally withdrew their accusation because they did not have enough evidence.

Ms. Bobadilla said it took an entire year after the Honduran woman was absolved for her criminal record to be cleared – and in that time, she lost out on a job opportunity. She said that the woman’s case is similar to many in the research they published.

“These women are poor, are being accused of something that they don’t have evidence of, that are obstetric emergencies,” Ms. Bobadilla said.

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Mr. Paradis believes that, in time, the work that Lawyers Without Border Canada supports will succeed in protecting what he sees as women’s fundamental human rights.

“It’s going to be difficult, but women around the world have these rights. They’re inherent – it’s not granted to them by a government or the law. So one day, the law will reflect that,” he said.

Earlier this year, two years after the constitutional challenge was initiated by Equipo Juridico por los Derechos Humanos – which represented 20 women’s and human-rights organizations – the Constitutional Chamber unanimously decided to reject it.

The group of lawyers appealed this decision and requested reconsideration, but the Constitutional Chamber of the new Supreme Court of Justice rejected it again in June, 2023. It was the only appeal that could be filed. With this decision, the new chamber ratified the decision of its predecessor. The organizations are evaluating other avenues to continue the fight.

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In the meantime, the work of all those fighting every day on the ground builds momentum. The Honduran woman said her lawyers taught her how to be a “woman warrior,” saying they helped her gain the courage to go into court, which was challenging because every time she did, people called her names, including “murderer.”

And the accusations have not ended. She recently lost her mother, and even at her burial, former neighbours asked her if she really did have an abortion all those years ago.

Despite what she’s been through, she said she feels brave. “That’s the way I’m supposed to face life, even though I have lived what I have lived,” she said.

With reports from Nincy Perdomo.

The trip to Honduras was partly funded by Bigger than Our Borders, an NGO-supported initiative urging the Canadian government to increase foreign-aid programs. They did not direct, review or approve the article.