Two days after a cesarean section in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, Clarissa (pictured above), 16, was detained by immigration agents and transferred to a detention center with her newborn. Born in the country but never registered due to her mother’s lack of documentation, she is stateless. Authorities presumed she was Haitian. Clarissa spent 48 hours in custody without food, water, or medical care, her surgical wounds still unhealed.

Haitian adolescents in the Dominican Republic, like Clarissa, accounted for nearly one in four recorded teenage pregnancies in 2025, despite representing a small share of the population. The teenager’s detention, in April 2025, occurred amid tightening deportation policies and legal restrictions. Since late 2024, deportations of Haitian migrants have intensified, including the removal of undocumented women and girls immediately after receiving medical care or giving birth, with immigration agents stationed outside maternity hospitals.

In August 2025, a new penal code reaffirmed the total criminalization of abortion, without exceptions for rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancies; eliminating any legal recourse for girls who become pregnant and further narrowing the options available to those already avoiding public hospitals for fear of detention.

These measures fall hardest on those with the fewest resources. Poverty restricts young Haitians’ access to contraception and healthcare. They have limited academic and reproductive education and are vulnerable to early cohabiting relationships with men much older than them. Wealthier families seek discreet antenatal care for their pregnant daughters; undocumented Haitian girls may avoid hospitals altogether. Their vulnerability is shaped by class, race and legal status – but Haitian girls are not alone.

I travelled to the Dominican Republic from Spain in May 2025 because the island has one of the highest adolescent pregnancy rates across Latin America and the Caribbean. According to the UN agency, Unicef, in 2024 one in five girls, aged 15 to 19, had begun having children. Between January and September 2025, almost 12,000 adolescent pregnancies were recorded, including 609 among girls under 15. The age of consent in the Dominican Republic is 18.

Across the cities and towns of Barahona, Dajabón, Las Terrenas, and Santo Domingo, I documented pregnancies resulting from sexual abuse and relationships shaped by economic constraint. Trust was built gradually, through repeated visits, long conversations with the girls and their mothers, and a self-representation photography workshop I led in Barahona in collaboration with a local women’s organization. I also witnessed mothers supporting daughters to finish school, neighbors sharing childcare, and initiatives discreetly distributing contraceptives. Where institutions fail, community becomes infrastructure.

But it was the stories of the Haitian girls that really struck me. Several of them described feeling suspended between two countries. They felt caught between childhood and forced adulthood, expected to carry the weight of motherhood before they had the chance to imagine their own futures. They spoke of pregnancies shaped by silence, stigma, and the absence of the care and information that might have allowed them to decide differently.

In February, national media reported a 66.3% decline in adolescent pregnancies over the previous nine years. It’s an impressive figure. Yet the basic conditions known to reduce teenage pregnancy – sexual education, accessible contraception and safe abortion – remain largely absent. And girls and women who are stateless, undocumented, or perceived to be Haitian, remain at great risk.