Today we’re presenting the first episode of “The Network,” a new series that Latino USA co-produced with NPR’s Embedded podcast.

In the mid-1980s, an OBGYN in Brazil noticed that far fewer pregnant women at his hospital were dying from abortion complications.

It wasn’t a coincidence.

Brazilian women had made a discovery that allowed them to safely have abortions at home, despite the country’s abortion restrictions. That discovery eventually spread across the globe.

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Funding for this series provided in part by The Levi Strauss Foundation, outfitting movements and leaders, fighting for a more just and abundant world, with support from the International Women’s Media Foundation, as part of its Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in the Americas Initiative, and the VDay Foundation.