June 6, 2019
The calls to La Línea almost always came from panicked women, often crying. “Please answer me!” they begged. “Don’t keep me waiting!” Many said they were calling for a “friend.” All were desperate to know the same thing, forbidden by law in Honduras: how to end an unwanted pregnancy safely.
Abortion in all instances, including rape, is illegal in Honduras. Any woman who has an abortion, and anyone found to have helped her, can be charged with a crime and imprisoned.
For that reason, La Línea (“The Line”) was a rare resource in Honduras. Mentioned in whispers among friends or seen on flyers passed out at universities or high schools in the capital of Tegucigalpa, La Línea was one of the only places where Honduran women could find accurate information about abortion.
But at the end of August 2018, La Línea’s phone line simply stopped working, leaving many women who needed information and support without anywhere to turn.
The women who ran La Línea were volunteers. They did their work in secret and knew the risks. Abortion is a deeply divisive issue in the country, where both Catholic and evangelical churches support the government’s strict prohibition. Still, after two years of giving desperate women information about abortion – and shortly before the line went down – the staff of La Línea decided they had to reach more women. That August, they tried to place an ad, which included their phone number, in a daily newspaper, La Tribuna. The paper refused to run the ad. Not long after, the organization’s cell phone stopped working and they received an error message saying the network couldn’t be reached.
Fearing for their safety, La Línea’s volunteers needed a plan to reopen the line. If the newspaper had reported the phone number to authorities, bringing the phone to one of the telecom provider’s offices could expose them. But scrapping the SIM card and changing phone numbers would leave the women who knew about La Línea with the wrong number. In January, they decided they had to try to reopen the line. Too many women needed their help. And the women of La Línea had a plan – the first step meant confiding in a friend who worked for the telecom company.
They promised to keep us updated.
Abortion in Honduras is illegal in all circumstances, including rape and incest, when a pregnant woman’s life is in danger, and when the fetus can’t survive outside the womb. The government also bans emergency contraception, often called the “morning after pill,” which is used to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex or a contraceptive failure.
Additionally, violent crime is rampant in Honduras, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates. Every 22 hours, a woman is violently killed. Nearly one in four women in Honduras has been physically or sexually abused by a partner, according to a 2011-2012 government survey. At least 40 percent of pregnancies are unplanned or unwanted at the time they occur. Some unintended pregnancies are caused by rape.
Additionally, more than 30,000 adolescents ages 10 to 19 give birth in Honduras each year. While not all these pregnancies are unwanted, girls can have more to lose from an unplanned pregnancy – like missing out on school or being pressured to get married before they’re ready – and can feel the need to take risks to end one. Girls may also have less information about safely ending pregnancies, putting them at risk of complications should they choose to have a clandestine abortion.
Key Recommendations
• Honduras’ National Congress and the government should ensure women and girls can safely and legally end pregnancies.
• The National Congress should remove all criminal penalties for abortion from the penal code.
• The government should end the ban on emergency contraception (often called the “morning-after pill”) and ensure that it is available and accessible to everyone.
Photo:One of the founders of La Línea (“The Line”), an information line for abortion in Honduras. She and the other volunteers who run La Línea answer calls and messages from women seeking information about abortion.