The Friendship Edition

El Salvador is one of just a handful of countries where abortion is banned in all circumstances. The ban is so comprehensive, that every miscarriage is considered suspicious and at least a dozen Salvadoran women who say they suffered a miscarriage are serving lengthy jail terms. Professor Michelle Oberman, a leading scholar on legal issues around pregnancy, tells the story of two such women who had recently been freed from prison.

Also: The story of two Somali girls in Boston who formed a friendship through writing poetry together; the tale of an unlikely bond between a guard and a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp; We hear from a Syrian superfan of the 90s hit TV programme ‘Friends’; and Marco Werman visits a local school in Boston to hear from some very young news consumers.

(Teodora Vasquez hugs her parents shortly after being released from the women’s Readaptation Centre, in Ilopango, El Salvador where she was serving a sentence since 2008. Credit: Marvin Recinos/Getty Images)