"Here they never ask you if you want to have children, it is expected because you are a woman. I had my first daughter very young, I have three in total, but I have also had two failures (miscarriages) and I have been cured just like that, only in the second one I had pain and I went to the post office".

This is the experience recounted by Eleuteria, a community member who lives in Palca, Sacaba, with her family.

Eleuteria has not had access to medical visits since her children completed their full childhood immunisation schedule at a nearby health centre. That was about 20 years ago.

She claims that none of her pregnancies were planned, she knows nothing about contraception and abortion is something that is out of the question in her community.

She is one of the 50 per cent of Bolivian women who had to face an unplanned pregnancy despite the economic crisis and the lack of information she had about it.

"You just learn that, it gets easier with time," her mother told her during her first pregnancy, at 15.

According to data presented by the Mesa de Maternidad y Nacimiento Seguro (MNMNS), almost 25% of pregnancies in Bolivia end in abortion and 1 in 10 women in the country claim to have undergone an induced abortion.

The maternal mortality rate is approximately 200 per 100,000 births.

According to obstetrician José Orellana, most pregnancies that end in miscarriage are due to the fact that the body is not ready for the gestation process.

"A body that is still in the process of formation, it is difficult to successfully form an embryo and then give birth. It is a very complex process and, from my experience in my consultations, it is the youngest women who present complications, because it is not something they have asked for either, to become mothers at their age," she says.

Read the full article in Opinion.