newsletter – Vignette

Vignette’s storytelling picks for September

Punam Dev, age 19, left, leaves Dr. Panakaj Pratap Deo's medical clinic, as her baby is held by her mother, and exits behind her, in Janakpur, Nepal, July 6, 2017. Dev, who was married at 16 and already has one daughter, came to Dr. Deo's clinic because she was 14 weeks pregnant and wanted to find out if she was having a boy or a girl. When she found out she was having a girl, she decided to abort, even though abortion is only legal up until 12 weeks in Nepal -- she and her husband don't want another baby girl that they will have to provide a dowry for. Dr. Deo is a doctor in a private hospital, but his clinic isn't legally authorized to provide abortion services. When asked whether he feared any problems with the police, he laughed out loud and said that was a silly question. Nepal legalized abortion 15 years ago, and public and private facilities have been set up to provide the procedure. However, because of issues like stigma, lack of education, and distrust of government facilities, most women don’t ask important questions of the health care providers, to see if a clinic/pharmacy has proper authorization from the government, or what they should do in the event of medical complications. And according to a recently released survey by the Center for Research on Environment, Health and Population Activities (CREHPA) more than half of Nepalese women got abortions by illegal providers in 2014. In January of 2017 the government of Nepal made all abortion and contraception services free in the country, which is an important step to help women get better services. But most women hadn't heard about the new initiative, and there wasn't a concerted campaign by the government to get the message out to local communities. This is an example of one of many issues with abortion access in Nepal. (Photo Credit/Tara Todras-Whitehill/European Journalism Centre/Vignette Interactive)

Check out our latest projects, as well as news from the storytelling world. This month, we launched an innovative interactive documentary for UNICEF Lebanon on Syrian refugee children who dream of an education. We also addressed pressing topics regarding the refugee crisis, the potentially catastrophic failure of Iraq’s Mosul dam and this year’s controversial World… Continue reading Our February newsletter is out!