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Venezuelan women continue to have secret abortions as Colombia threatens to close its borders to them

✇El País - English
By: Andrea Hernández
A doctor takes a woman’s blood pressure at Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, in March 2022.

It is 2022. In a neighborhood in western Caracas, Yolanda (a fictitious name) walks through a checkpoint manned by hooded police officers. In her pocket, she carries a small transparent bag containing several misoprostol pills – the second part of the treatment recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for a safe medical abortion.

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The owner of this pair of pants had an abortion two months before the photo was taken, but was still bleeding. Caracas, Venezuela, March 26, 2023.A companion embraces a woman undergoing an abortion in a low-income neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on August 26, 2022. The procedure lasted about four hours. As she moaned in pain inside the bathroom, the companion held her and said, “You are strong, you can get through this. I'm right here.”A companion asks a woman undergoing a medical abortion if she can enter the bathroom, in order to hold her hair and body while she vomits and sits on the toilet. Photo taken in a house located in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on August 25, 2022. Near this house, police forces are stopping everyone entering the neighborhood at a makeshift checkpoint.

© Andrea Hernández Briceño

A mother nurses her child while she walks towards a Red Cross camp in La Parada, on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, on September 17, 2018.

© Andrea Hernández Briceño (EL PAÍS)

A woman taking misoprostol pills in a low-income neighborhood in western Caracas, Venezuela, on August 25, 2022.

© Andrea Hernández Briceño (EL PAÍS)

A protest against femicides in the historic center of Caracas, Venezuela, on March 11, 2023.

© Andrea Hernández Briceño

A pregnant 14-year-old shows the tattoo on her belly, standing on the Simón Bolívar International Bridge on September 17, 2018.

Pregnant Venezuelan women waiting to be seen at the Erasmo Meoz University Hospital in Cúcuta, Colombia, on September 17, 2018.

© Andrea Hernández Briceño (EL PAÍS)

A woman in bed next to the altar she made for her fetus' sonogram, at her house in Caracas, on March 26, 2023.

© Andrea Hernandez Briceno

An activist for the feminist organization Comadres Púrpuras marches on the Day of Global Action for Safe and Legal Abortions in Caracas, on September 28, 2022.

© Andrea Hernández Briceño

A woman leading a dance group during a protest march by a Christian coalition against sexual and reproductive health education in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 13, 2023.
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