13 years ago, Honduras became the only country in Latin America to ban the morning after pill. Already one of the most conservative countries in the region, this single act represented a massive step backwards for women’s rights and wellbeing, with predictable results: Since then, 330,000 underage girls have become mothers. As for today, one out of every four Honduran girls are getting pregnant before turning 18, half of the cases are raped by the men closest to them.

GE PAE is a non-governmental organization that has fought for over a decade to repeal the prohibition, facing serious headwinds: no media budget, no support from the private sector, zero institutionalized sexual health education (allowing the spread of constant misinformation and cultivating taboo), and a conservative national media in bed with the same religious leaders that call women murderers and death cultists when they ask for basic human rights.

Since the ban, Honduran women’s rights and safety have been on the decline. Honduras is the country with the second-highest rate of femicide in Latin America— a Honduran woman is killed every 23 hours. This violence is not limited to murder: 50% of the massive spike in underage pregnancies since the ban are a result of sexual violence. And because abortions are illegal, these victims are forced to carry their pregnancies to term, or face prison sentences of up to six years, with providers also facing legal sanctions. These restrictions have even been enshrined in the country’s constitution.

With no national sex ed plan in place, there is no effective counter to the misinformation campaign carried out by the conservative religious establishment. Many Honduran women aren’t even aware of the pill, and many who are, have been convinced that taking it is the same as having an abortion. This environment has led to a harsh curtailment of the national media’s willingness to even discuss the topic, effectively shutting out women’s voices entirely.

A glimpse of hope finally came in 2021: the election of Honduras’s first female President. This was an opportunity that we were determined to make the most of.

How could we provide a solution for desperate women, without risking our freedom? In the end, the insight was simple: if our rights are denied in our own homeland, why not go where no government or establishment has the power to stop us? After conferring with civil rights legal experts, we decided to look towards international waters.

So Morning After Island came to life, a platform where we could take the morning after pill without fear of prosecution. Where we could raise our voices, be seen and heard by the world, with no one to silence us. Where we could build support and pressure our government for change without retaliation.

First, we built the platform, safely anchored in international waters outside of Honduran jurisdiction, and organize regular trips to provide women with a pill— but this was only a short-term solution. Our objective was to pressure the government to repeal the law, and for that, we needed international mass media attention. We decided to focus on the compelling stories of the individual women who used the platform.

We filmed these journeys and create short-form videos designed to be powerful to share, with a simple call to action: sign our petition. Our initial target audience would be Millennials and Gen Z, selected for their progressive values and responsiveness to meaningful content. By building the conversation in this way, our action would quickly become newsworthy, allowing us to expand our reach even further by pitching to global news media outlets with a press release, interviews, and multimedia assets.

We built the platform and scheduled regular voyages free of cost to any woman who needed the pill. By bus, by car, and by boat, women in need were given the choice they’d been denied by the government. After, we produced the first short video with a female rights activist.

In preparation, our media team pitched the story to more than fifty news media outlets curated for their strong stances on social issues, as well as dozens of digital media platforms in Latin America, the US, and Europe. Less than a week after the first video launched, influencers from the US to Argentina to India were calling on their millions of followers to show their support. This initial virality earned coverage from CNN International; from there, the momentum became unstoppable. We’d achieved our main goal: this issue could no longer be silenced by traditional Honduran media or its government officials.

In less than 6 months, we gathered more than 2 million signatures from around the world and created global awareness of Honduran women’s plight. Our efforts earned us what we’d been denied for more than a decade: a seat at the table. President Xiomara Castro invited our group to a formal meeting on International Woman’s Day, where we were able to discuss the issue of the morning after pill. Simultaneously, an all-women session of Congress met to discuss plans to address the many additional problems facing Honduran women. By the end of the day, the government had made a public commitment, including the formation of a new Ministry of Women and a broad legislative proposal defending our sexual, reproductive, and civil rights. In the meantime, the Morning After Island has changed 500+ lives and remains the only choice for more than 3 million Honduran women.