When Oscar Elias Biscet was a young physician in Havana, he noticed something peculiar. Cuba’s healthcare system was held up as one of the finest in the world, but the communist country also had the highest abortion rate in the Americas. What’s more, babies were regularly being aborted just moments before birth and even after birth.

When Biscet exposed this grisly practice, he was stripped of his medical license (his wife, Elsa Morejon, lost her nursing job). A year later, he displayed the Cuban flag upside down and received a three-year prison sentence for public disorder and dishonoring national symbols. A few days after his release, Biscet was re-arrested, this time for meeting with other dissidents, convicted of treason and given a 25-year term, including significant time in solitary confinement.