Unreported World reports from Nicaragua, a country where a climate of fear is scaring women from hospitals and doctors are afraid to carry out life-saving operations on their female patients. In October 2006, Nicaragua's government banned abortions in all cases; even in cases of rape, incest or life-threatening conditions, and the programme reveals how this has led to an increase in dangerous backstreet abortions and allegations that women are dying as a result.

Reporter Kate Seelye and Producer Paul Kittel begin their journey in the capital, Managua, which is still plastered with election posters supporting President Daniel Ortega. The left-wing former Sandinista leader won with the backing of the powerful Catholic and Evangelical churches after he supported their demand for a total abortion ban.

The team heads to the nearby city of Leon, home to the country's largest teaching hospital. There they meet a woman who desperately needs an abortion; her pregnancy is exacerbating a severe heart condition and the medicine she's taking is likely to harm her foetus. Her doctor tells Seelye that terminating the woman's pregnancy is the best solution. But he doesn't dare. He could face up to six years in jail if caught breaking the law.

Back in Managua the team meets the mother of another victim of the ban. Nineteen-year-old Jazmina was five months pregnant when she checked herself into a hospital bleeding and suffering premature contractions. Doctors have been accused of delaying treating her, fearing the consequences of the new law. When Jazmina's unborn child finally died, she bled heavily and went into septic shock. She too died. Seated outside her home with her orphaned grandchild, Jazmina's mother reveals that ironically, she attends services at an Evangelical church which campaigned for the ban.

Seelye and Kittel attend a Catholic church service and meet one of the main advocates of the ban, Father Henry Moreno. He tells Seelye that the ban will not put women's lives at risk because of medical advancement and denies criticism that the church sought to politicize the issue by mounting the campaign on the eve of a presidential election.

The team travels to meet a doctor still willing to carry out illegal abortions. She tells Unreported World that she's willing to risk her career because if she doesn't offer safe, affordable abortions, her clients might be forced to take more drastic, risky measures.

Illustrating the doctor's point, the team visits several prostitutes in a rough neighborhood of Managua. There a woman shows Seelye how she induced her own abortion. She became ill afterwards but says she didn't go to a hospital for help. Since the ban, she says women with botched abortions are afraid to seek treatment at hospitals, fearing they may face prison.

Seelye tracks down a Sandinista legislator at a government function. He tells her that the ban was popular in Nicaragua, which is why it got his party's backing. But later in a private women's clinic, yet another doctor explains how the ban is having a devastating impact on women's health. Women who are suffering complications with their pregnancies are being interrogated in hospitals, driving them into the hands of untrained practitioners.

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