Faulty birth control, forced motherhood
Original drawing for Ojalá by @pazconadie.
Reportage • Yasna Mussa • June 6, 2025 • Leer en castellano
The day Valentina Donoso’s life turned upside down began like any other. She went to pick up her birth control medication at the Cesfam Family Health Center, Chile's public primary care facility. While there, she noticed a sign warning patients about contaminated lots of the pills that she had been taking for years, Anulette CD.
When Donoso got home, she discovered that the pills she had taken the previous month were part of the defective batch.
“I had other plans for my life. I wanted to study and find a good job,” said Donoso, who is now 25 and has a four-year-old daughter. “I didn't plan on being a mother, because to be a mother you need to be financially stable.”
It was 2020, and the world was facing down the COVID-19 pandemic. In Chile, strict lockdowns drove unemployment, and hundreds of women became pregnant against their wishes due to the mass distribution of defective birth control pills provided by a government that did not allow legal access to abortion.
The failures went beyond ineffective pills: Donoso said that no one from the clinic called her to warn her to take precautions, even though staff there had been alerted a month earlier about the ineffective pills.
“I never thought government negligence would affect all of my life plans,” she said.
Taking the state to court
Donoso’s testimony is one of seven cases that are part of a civil lawsuit that Corporación Miles has filed against the Chilean state with support from Women’s Link Worldwide. The women represented in the lawsuit became pregnant while using defective birth control that the public health system provided. According to Corporación Miles, which promotes sexual and reproductive rights in Chile, defective pills impacted over 200 women.
The lawsuit holds the state responsible for harming them emotionally, financially and in their personal lives, and names several specific institutions, including the Institute of Public Health, the National Supply Center and the Ministry of Health.
During a seminar that Corporación Miles organized on the state’s role in reproductive health, Dorothy Estrada, from the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, said that Chile, as a member of the Organization of American States and a signatory to the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women, has a mandate “to adopt measures and policies to prevent and punish violence against women and ensure that other actors do not affect their rights.”
“I want state institutions to take responsibility [for their failures] and to support us as we face the economic burden of becoming mothers without having prepared to do so, and to ensure that our children receive health and education services,” said Donoso.
Original drawing for Ojalá by @pazconadie.
On a Friday morning in autumn in Santiago, Chile, the corridors of Corporación Miles are busier than usual, as they host a training session that brings together leaders of feminist organizations. Luz Reidel Wagner, deputy director of Social and Political Advocacy and a lawyer at Corporación Miles, let out a deep sigh that summed up how devastating this legal process and the road to achieving something resembling justice has been for the lives of those affected by this negligence.
Class is a significant factor with regards to those who put their trust in the public system: government clinics overwhelmingly serve women from the most vulnerable communities who have the least economic resources.
“This is fundamental, and it is why we have put so much energy into fighting this case and moving it forward with legal representation, because ultimately this has a multidimensional impact on people's lives,” said Reidel Wagner, the lawyer, in an interview with Ojalá.
In addition to impacting first-time mothers and women who did not want to have more children, Reidel Wagner notes some of those affected gave birth to children with health complications, which means greater unplanned expenses for families from poorer backgrounds.
“There is also the issue of access to justice for women in this situation,” said Reidel Wagner. “A civil lawsuit for damages is an extremely long, cumbersome and difficult process. It requires lawyers who are well-versed in the subject matter, so that they can litigate effectively against the state.”
The corporation has secured external support through their links with international organizations and pro bono collaboration from a law firm that specializes in the field.
Chileans left wanting for free and safe abortion
In a country where abortion is only permitted in three situations—danger to the life of the pregnant person, fetal non-viability or pregnancy resulting from rape—Donoso and others like her had few options. If she had decided to terminate the pregnancy, she would have had to do so clandestinely and would not have had any support if something went wrong.
When we spoke, Reidel Wagner mentioned a key point that many overlook: in a country with legislation like Chile's, pregnant people who decide to have an abortion typically go through it alone, without family members waiting outside the clinic. They are afraid and uncertain, living through the process in silence, often burdened by guilt or shame due to social condemnation.
“[Support] should be provided for abortion, because it is a medical service. When we talk about family, we are also talking about the support that we are depriving women who have abortions today from having in their lives, because we criminalize them,” said Reidel Wagner. "This is very real in our country and very sad. It is something we can avoid by moving toward a system of time limits that allows us to meet international standards."
Prior to 2017, abortion was illegal in Chile under all circumstances, making the South American country one of only six in the world that prohibited abortion even when the pregnant person’s life was endangered. Although Law 21.030 decriminalized abortion, and introduced the three exceptions currently in force, the reality is that doctors in some hospitals refuse to perform the procedure for moral reasons.
Despite this, the statistics speak volumes. Following adoption of the law, doctors have performed 5,324 abortions. According to the Health Ministry, rape was a factor in over a quarter of the cases. The same agency noted that there have been no deaths associated with regulated procedures.
President Gabriel Boric’s defense of abortion rights during the last Cuenta Pública—an annual state of the union speech to Congress—sparked reactions from feminist groups who have long fought for reproductive rights in Chile. Days earlier, the Minister for Women and Gender Equality, Antonia Orellana, expressed the government's position when she stated that women who have abortions “should no longer be treated as criminals or prosecuted.”
On May 28, over three years into Boric’s presidential term, a group of ministers introduced a bill to Congress that would allow voluntary abortion within set time limits. In doing so, they took a step toward fulfilling a key campaign promise: access to legal, free and safe abortion.
The 8M Feminist Coordinating Committee stated in a press release that the announcement “comes too late” and that the government isn’t addressing the issue with the necessary political urgency.
“We will not accept symbolic projects or half-hearted concessions,” said Javiera Mena Muñoz, one of the Committee’s spokeswomen. “We want a robust law that centers our demands. A law centered on freedom, justice and care.”
