The Gag Rule's Victims.

• Author: Conklin, Melanie
• Position: Health issues and women in Nepal

During her third pregnancy, Maya, a Nepalese woman, suffered from frequent dizzy spells. At seven months pregnant, she took pain tablets for relief and, as a result, miscarried. Shortly afterwards, her landlord accused her of murder, and the police came. Maya was sentenced to twenty years in prison for inducing an abortion. Though the sentence was later reduced to two years, she is still in prison.

On a fact-finding mission to Nepal earlier this year, staff from the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy met and interviewed Maya (not her real name) and many others in similar situations. Due to poor prenatal health care, one out of every ten pregnancies in Nepal results in a miscarriage, the center says, and there are about 4,500 maternal deaths per year.

Women in Nepal who miscarry or choose to have an abortion face some of the stiffest legal and social penalties in the world. Having an abortion there is considered infanticide. It is illegal in every circumstance and is punishable by life in prison.

Rami is a Nepalese girl of fourteen who was raped by her uncle and gave birth to a baby who was born dead. Scared and confused, she buried the baby. Eight days later, fellow villagers discovered the body and reported her to the police. They believed she'd had an abortion, and the young teen was charged with infanticide. The sentence was life in prison.

Pima is an eighteen-year-old woman in Nepal who has four daughters. Last year, when she became pregnant for a fifth time, a local assistant health care worker told her husband she might have another girl. Her husband responded by tying her hands and legs with rope and forcing her to have a brutal abortion against her will. Pima cried out for help until she passed out. No one responded. Once she awoke, pain kept her from speaking for a week, after which time she was informed that the aborted fetus had been a boy. Pima's injuries are permanent, and her health is deteriorating.

I heard these last two stories from Sapana Malla, a prominent women's rights advocate with the Forum for Women, Law, and Development in Nepal. (The women's names have been changed.) Sixty-five women are in currently in prison in Nepal for having an abortion, Malla says. It is almost always the women--rather than men who force them to have abortions or the doctors who perform them--who are jailed, she says.

"Married, widowed, unmarried, children under sixteen, victims of rape and incest--all are in prison," Malla tells me. Sometimes, the children of an imprisoned mother are incarcerated with her, Malla adds.

But if Malla's organization were to take any U.S. funding--including money from USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development), which is heavily relied upon in Nepal--she would be...