Central America – Ipas videos on abortion with pills attract almost a million views

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

In 2018, Ipas Central America and Mexico (Ipas CAM) created an informational video in Spanish on how women can safely self-manage an abortion using misoprostol, a safe and effective drug readily available in most pharmacies in Mexico without a prescription. Staff started using the video to train Mexican pharmacy workers so they could advise and support women seeking abortion pills.

But they quickly realized that views of the video on their YouTube channel far outpaced the number of trainings they were doing. People searching the internet for information on abortion with pills were finding and watching their video (“Safe Abortion with Misoprostol”) by the thousands, and a robust discussion had also started in the comments section.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/ipas-videos-on-abortion-with-pills-attract-almost-a-million-views/

Mexico: women’s groups dismayed after judges dodge abortion decision

Supreme court votes against proposal on technical grounds. Plan could have opened path towards decriminalization

David Agren in Mexico City
Thu 30 Jul 2020

Mexican women’s groups have expressed deep disappointment after the supreme court dodged a ruling on a proposal which could have opened a legal path towards decriminalizing abortion.

In a 4-1 decision, the court voted on Wednesday against the proposal for technical reasons – without addressing arguments that restrictions on abortion violated women’s rights and contravened international treaties to which Mexico is a signatory.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/30/mexico-abortion-ruling-supreme-court

Mexico Supreme Court rejects state’s bid to decriminalize abortion

July 29, 2020

Mexico's Supreme Court has rejected a landmark injunction on abortion rights across the country.

The case revolved around an injunction granted in the eastern state of Veracruz, which would have effectively decriminalised termination in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-53584575

29.07.2020

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Mexico’s activists brace for landmark supreme court abortion ruling

The ruling could set a precedent; in states that have restrictive regulations, injunctions could be granted to allow the procedure

David Agren in Mexico City
Published on Wed 29 Jul 2020

Activists on both sides of Mexico’s abortion debate are bracing for a potentially historic supreme court hearing on Wednesday, which could lead to decriminalisation across the country.

The case before the five judges of the high court’s first bench involves an injunction granted in the eastern state of Veracruz, which ordered the local legislature to remove articles from its criminal code pertaining to abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/29/mexico-abortion-activists-supreme-court

29.07.2020

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Mexico – You’re a Doc, You’ve Got This, but Your Face Shield’s Foggy

“The will to live—and to help other women live and have access to abortion—kept me going.”

By Maria Espinoza
July 22, 2020

Cuernavaca, Morelos—They say that a person can get used to anything, except not eating. I guess that’s true. After five months of exercising extreme caution as a doctor, it all seems comfortable and easy now compared with those distant days of late February, when the pandemic had just begun to dawn on us all.

Back then, I was getting ready to go to the Mexico City airport to travel to the annual meeting of a group of sexual and reproductive health specialists when a rumor was spreading online that the first case of Covid-19 had been documented in Mexico. It swiftly became clear that the rumor was fact. A colleague, who coordinates training for our loose and vulnerable national network of abortion providers, reported that her husband, an internist at one of Mexico’s most exclusive private hospitals, was treating that first Covid case.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/coronavirus-mexico-doctor/

22.07.2020

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Mexico – Initiative for the decriminalization of abortion rejected in Guanajuato

Initiative for the decriminalization of abortion rejected in Guanajuato

By Yucatan Times
May 26, 2020

Guanajuato, Mexico - Representatives from the Justice and Public Health Commissions rejected this Tuesday May 26th, the initiative on the decriminalization of abortion in Guanajuato, declaring it inadmissible with three votes in favor and six against.

In a virtual session, legislators from the Guanajuato Congress, most of them PAN members, rejected the request to analyze the issue for longer, an initiative proposed by local representatives from Morena and the Revolution Democratic Party (PRD).

Continued: https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2020/05/initiative-for-the-decriminalization-of-abortion-rejected-in-guanajuato/

Pandemic further hinders safe abortion in Latin America

Pandemic further hinders safe abortion in Latin America

By Carlos Christian
April 9, 2020

Calls decreased, but text messages increased. They cannot speak because they hear them. They cannot say in front of their families that they seek help, that they need to abort. Las Comadres, a feminist network in Ecuador that provides information to women who want to terminate their pregnancies with drugs, has had to change its communication channels in recent weeks. Telephone calls are becoming increasingly difficult. Isolation, imposed as a mitigation measure by Covid-19, has limited the freedom of those seeking access to an abortion, but not the determination of those who are determined to do so.

Verónica Vera, one of the sixty Ecuadorians who responds to requests for accompaniment, now through platforms such as Telegram, says that in March requests for support increased by 25%. Women who want to abort will do so even in a health emergency, and the public health system in Latin America seems not ready to respond. “The difficulty of mobilizing due to the measures adopted by the pandemic, the collapsed medical services and the lack of privacy within prolonged confinements could lead to a setback in Latin America,” he warns.

Continued: https://theunionjournal.com/pandemic-further-hinders-safe-abortion-in-latin-america-society/

Mexico – The Radical Future of Self-Managed Abortion Is Already Here

The Radical Future of Self-Managed Abortion Is Already Here
“I remember one woman who arrived and asked, ‘Is this the clinic?’ And we were like, ‘What clinic?’”

By Amy Littlefield and Laura Gottesdiener
March 4, 2020

Lizy and the woman who helped her to end her pregnancy met at a Starbucks in León, the largest city in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Then a 20-year-old social-work student with curly hair and a heart-shaped face, Lizy, which is a nickname we’ve used to help protect her identity, felt nervous about discussing her pregnancy in such a public place. She was afraid she could be jailed for even considering an abortion, which is a crime in most cases in the heavily Catholic and conservative state. Enrolled in an exchange program in a city where she knew few people, she had no way to make the hours-long trip to Mexico City, the only place where abortion was legal at the time. She and her partner felt hopeless. “We were dying from fear, really, we were two frightened children,” she said later, seated in a park in her home city of Guadalajara. Finally, she had confided in a professor who told her about Rosalía.

Continued; https://newrepublic.com/article/156667/radical-future-self-managed-abortion-already

Women perform in favor of abortion before Mexican cathedral

Women perform in favor of abortion before Mexican cathedral

Published January 6, 2020
By the Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — A dozen women wearing green scarves lined up in front the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City’s central square on Sunday to call for legal and safe abortions throughout Mexico.

Abortion is highly restricted in the country of 120 million inhabitants, with the exception of the capital Mexico City and the southern state of Oaxaca, where the procedure is allowed up to 12 weeks of gestation.

To the sound of a metal spoon clanking against an iron frying pan, the women performed a variation of “A Rapist in Your Path” — the viral dance sequence concocted by the Chilean feminist collective La Tesis to protest violence against women. The moves are the same, but the words have changed; in this version, an “objector” stands in their path.

Continued: https://news.mb.com.ph/2020/01/06/women-perform-in-favor-of-abortion-before-mexican-cathedral/

Mexico moves toward legal abortion, but women still face jail

Mexico moves toward legal abortion, but women still face jail

30 Nov 2019

GUANAJUATO, Mexico: Martha Mendez and Susana Duenas were both teenagers when they committed their "crime": suffering a miscarriage.

Accused of having an abortion - which is illegal in all but two states in Mexico - Mendez was forced to ask her fetus for forgiveness. Duenas was jailed for seven years.

Continued; https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/mexico-moves-toward-legal-abortion--but-women-still-face-jail-12140018