“They had a look in their eyes. It was a plea to be saved from their misery,” she said in Amharic, during an interview last month.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—It’s the faces of the women and girls receiving treatment for botched abortions that still haunt nurse Hanna, 47 years into her nursing career.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—It’s the faces of the women and girls receiving treatment for botched abortions that still haunt nurse Hanna, 47 years into her nursing career.

“They had a look in their eyes. It was a plea to be saved from their misery,” she said in Amharic, during an interview last month.

This was in Ethiopia in the 1980s, and Hanna—whose name has been changed to protect her identity—had just started working in a hospital. She remembers having to remove grass, bits of wood, and dangerous chemical concoctions from her patients’ uteruses. She also remembers feeling helpless.

“We did everything we could at the time, antibiotics and all kinds of medications,” she said. “But we couldn’t save most of them. It would be too late by the time they came in. They’d go into septic shock.”

Abortion was illegal then. It was allowed only under one exception: to save a pregnant woman’s life. The result of the draconian legislation was the avoidable death of tens of thousands of women and girls. Between 1980 and 1999, a third of all maternal deaths in Ethiopia could be attributed to unsafe abortions.