Elena was twenty-one when she went to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain and was told she was pregnant. The news came as a shock. Living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa—the sprawling capital of Honduras—Elena (whose name has been changed here to protect her privacy) lacked access to proper nutrition and had received no prenatal care since she didn’t even know she was pregnant. At the public hospital that day in 2017, she learned she was suffering from an internal infection and severe anemia. Elena was told her fetus had died, and she spent three days in the emergency room.
But what came after the miscarriage was even more shocking.
