Creative strategy can change law.

For years, Grupo Estratégico PAE, the lead NGO struggling bravely to overturn the ban on the morning after pill in Honduras, faced overwhelming 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 called women murderers and death cultists simply for asking for basic human rights.

Years of effort proved ineffective.

Until we proposed an innovative strategic POV, stepping outside the sphere of influence of the Honduran establishment.

14 years ago, Honduras became the only country in Latin America to ban the morning after pill.

This ban represented a massive step backwards for Honduran women, with predictable results: Since then, 350,000 underage girls have become mothers. Today, one out of every four Honduran girls will become pregnant before turning 18.

Given the severity of the situation and the failure of local efforts, the brief defined a singular yet complex goal. We had to influence key political actors, including the President of Honduras, to address the issue in official government proceedings.

To achieve this, we would first need to accomplish the following: Find a way around the local media embargo, as defined below, in order to generate coverage and conversation about the issue of the plan B pill.

After many years of working with the client, using every activist play in the book, from lobbying to civil disobedience to paid media, we had discovered that the challenge went far beyond messaging, design, or targeting. Even the most shocking statistics and stories were not enough, when the conservative establishment blocked us at every turn. Media outlets refused to cover us. Government officials turned us away. Law enforcement was used to intimidate us.

The only way to change the law was to persuade or force government officials to take action. But how could we do that, when they simply turned a blind eye to any and all efforts? We needed to break the institutional barriers that had been set up against Honduran women’s voices, without a budget— luckily for us, there was one thing the client possessed in abundance: courage.

Through constant workshops with activists, legal experts, and historians, three facts kept coming up again and again. First, that Honduran women were consistently courageous in the face of terrible situations. Second, that courage often led them to go to extremes for the sake of their future and their families’ wellbeing. And third, that the Honduran government was historically much more responsive to international pressure than to local discontent.

The question then became: How could we channel that courage, going outside of Honduras itself to provide a solution for women and capture the attention of the world?

Over the course of nearly 4 years, we explored international collaborations. Every time, our proposals were rejected for being “too risky.” Clearly, no one else matched our willingness to do whatever it took. An image of a strong Honduran woman standing alone on an island began to form in our imagination.

First, we would build a platform, safely anchored in international waters outside of Honduran jurisdiction, and organize regular trips and supplies 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 attention. We decided to focus on the compelling stories of the courageous women who used the platform.

We would film these journeys and create short-form videos designed to be irresistible for sharing, 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 newsmedia outlets with a press release, interviews, and multimedia assets.

We gathered more than 2 million signatures from around the world, creating global awareness of Honduran women’s plight and earning what we’d been denied for too long. President Xiomara Castro invited our group to a formal meeting on International Woman’s Day, where we discussed the issue of the pill. By the end of the session, the government had committed to repealing the ban and invited us to be a part of the working group.

As a result of our continued PR and lobbying efforts throughout 2022, the President signed new legislation on March 8, 2023 fully legalizing the pill and creating an official protocol for victims of sexual violence, giving Honduran women the rights and support they’ve been denied for decades.

Finally, we retired the Morning After Island. But, while the platform itself may be gone, its impact will remain forever.