How a network of women in Latin America transformed safe, self-managed abortions

June 8, 2025
By Marta Martínez, Liana Simstrom
Podcast: 41-Minute Listen

In November 1990, more than 3,000 women descended on the sleepy beach town of San Bernardo del Tuyú, Argentina, for what was becoming a legendary event.

Activists, doctors, academics, social workers and lawyers from across the Americas traveled all the way to attend a feminist gathering known as an Encuentro.

While they publicly debated their political demands, the piece of information that made the biggest impact on the future of abortion was exchanged in private, in whispers.

Continued; https://www.npr.org/2025/06/08/g-s1-68729/latin-america-abortion-activism

08.06.2025

Interviews/Podcasts

'La Escuela Socorrista

abortion accompaniment workshop

abortion manual

abortion pills

abortion support networks

Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe

First Responders Network

Gabriela Luchetti

green bandana

green wave

Ibis Reproductive Health

Kelly Blanchard

Las Libres

Lesbianas y Feministas por la Descriminalización del Aborto

Lesbians and Feminists for Abortion Decriminalization

self-managed abortion

self-managed abortion manual

Socorristas En Red

Veronica Cruz

Women on Waves

World Health Organization

USA – ‘A Virtual Abortion Doula in Your Pocket’: Aya Contigo Helps Latinas Find Abortion Care

5/26/2024
by Carrie N. Baker

U.S. abortion bans impact 6.7 million Latinas in the United States—the largest group of women of color impacted by these bans. Many lack insurance, cannot travel and face language and cultural barriers to reproductive healthcare.

To address these barriers, two Canadian physicians—Dr. Roopan Gill and Dr. Genevieve Tam—co-created Aya Contigo, an app with an embedded live virtual chat to help people access contraception and abortion. A project of Vitala Global, the app provides resources for obtaining and using abortion pills, and the chat is staffed by professional counselors who walk users through the process. Launched originally in Venezuela, Aya Contigo began serving the United States in September 2023 with plans to expand to Guatemala.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/05/26/spanish-abortion-support-usa-venezuela-latina-women/

US Feminists Look to Latin America for Models to Resist Abortion Bans

Latin American activists have navigated widespread abortion bans with information-sharing support networks.

By Naomi Braine , Truthout
January 3, 2025

As U.S. residents prepare for the start of a new Trump administration, we face increasing threats to health and bodily autonomy, especially for people facing unwanted pregnancies. Currently, 12 states have completely banned abortion, an additional six states have imposed bans within the first trimester and 19 states impose restrictions specifically on medication abortions.

In spite of expanding restrictions, the overall rate of abortions has increased nationally, as clinicians in states that allow abortion expand services to meet the needs of people traveling to find care. Meanwhile, an unknowable number of people with unwanted pregnancies have taken abortion pills to end a pregnancy safely and effectively in the privacy of their own home, a friend’s home or another safe space — a practice known as self-managed abortion (SMA).

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/us-feminists-look-to-latin-america-for-models-to-resist-abortion-bans/

03.01.2025

Commentary

abortion bans

abortion pills

abortion support networks

Las Libres

self-managed abortion

Mexico / Malta – These two women are making abortions possible for those whose governments won’t allow it

“Our aim is to guarantee free and safe legal abortions to rape survivors”

September 27, 2024

Verónica Cruz Sánchez, for Amnesty International

Years ago in Guanajuato and throughout Mexico, abortion for survivors of rape wasn’t available. While it was technically legal, our government did not provide the services women and girls needed.

We created our feminist organization Las Libres (the Free Ones) in 2000 because we wanted to promote women’s rights and be there for those who had been raped. It seemed completely inhuman to think that these girls would have to bring these pregnancies to term. We wanted to make sure their rights were upheld, so we formed a network of gynaecologists, along with psychologists and lawyers to help guarantee the right to free and safe abortion. We also wanted to support girls and women who wanted to terminate unwanted pregnancies at home without medical supervision by accessing abortion pills for free.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2024/09/these-two-women-are-making-abortions-possible-for-those-whose-governments-wont-allow-it/

27.09.2024

Commentary

abortion decriminalization

Amnesty International

Isabel Stabile

Las Libres

Verónica Cruz Sánchez

Global: Abortion rights defenders facing violence and stigmatization share powerful stories as part of Amnesty’s new podcast

September 26, 2024
Amnesty International

People defending the right to abortion have revealed what it’s like to provide life-saving healthcare in the face of violence, repression and stigma, as part of Amnesty International’s second season of On the Side of Humanity podcast.

The three-part series – slated for release on International Safe Abortion Day on 28 September and available via all good podcast apps – features stories from healthcare workers and activists who are defending the right of women, girls and anyone who can get pregnant to take control over their own bodies and to get the best available healthcare when they most need it. Each episode is approximately 30 minutes.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/09/global-abortion-rights-defenders-facing-violence-and-stigmatization-share-powerful-stories-as-part-of-amnestys-new-podcast/

Community Providers Have Given Abortion Pills to Over 70,000 People in Restrictive States Since Dobbs

PUBLISHED 9/13/2024
by Carrie N. Baker, Ms. Magazine

In response to the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022 and many states banning and restricting abortion access, abortion advocates have created volunteer-run, donor-supported, community-based mutual aid groups around the country to provide free abortion pills to people living in states restricting abortion.

These community providers obtain medication from overseas suppliers, bring them into the country and mail them from within the United States so that people receive them promptly. Many of these groups—including AccessMA, FL Companion Request, Access Pills, Oklahoma Access and Territory Access, among others—serve people of all ages and gestational stages, using different protocols for people in later pregnancy.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/09/13/community-providers-have-given-abortion-pills-to-70000-people-in-restrictive-states-since-dobbs/

Meet the Mexican women smuggling abortion pills into the US

The right to abortion is becoming one of the defining issues of the upcoming US presidential election. With abortion banned in 14 US states, activists from neighbouring Mexico have mobilised to distribute abortion pills to American women.

4 August 2024
By Sara Tomevska

At the highly policed border crossing between Mexico and California, an organised drug smuggling operation is underway.

The drug in question? Abortion pills.

Mexican activist Crystal waits up to four hours a day to bring the pills across the border, where they're mailed to thousands of American women in states where abortion – once a constitutional right – is now a crime.

Continued: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/article/meet-the-mexican-women-smuggling-abortion-pills-into-the-us/hqpnakc6a

04.08.2024

Commentary

abortion pills from Mexico

Las Libres

Mark Lee Dickson

Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn

self-managed abortion

Mexico’s abortion activists pivot to help Americans as they struggle with the post-Roe reality

Mexicans once envied the reproductive freedoms available in the United States. Now, they’re shipping pills across the border and fielding desperate questions from states where abortion is effectively banned

JANICE DICKSON, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS REPORTER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY VERÓNICA GABRIELA CÁRDENAS
June 26, 2024

Vanessa Jiménez Rubalcava could spend all day responding to text messages. They come in at all hours, a torrent of questions from Americans translated into Spanish. The women and girls on the other end are all looking for the same thing: abortion pills.

On a quiet street in Monterrey, a sprawling city in northern Mexico, getting help from Ms. Jiménez Rubalcava and her wife, Sandra Cardona Alanís, is the only option for many women living north of the border who are desperate to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-mexicos-abortion-activists-pivot-to-help-americans-as-they-struggle/

She wanted an abortion. Her only option was driving to Mexico.

An excerpt from 'Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in a Post-Roe America'

May 26, 2024
Shefali Luthra

This article, an excerpt from “Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in a Post-Roe America,” was originally published by The 19th.

Before Roe v. Wade fell, McAllen had been home to the last abortion clinic in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, and Becky, a lifelong Texan and young college student, knew the place by sight. It was where the other girls at school used to go whenever they needed help, just by city hall, next to a church, and a short drive from an H-E-B supermarket. It was easy to find. There was a mural on the outside of brightly painted women standing in a field, holding what looked like balls of light, gazing up at the sun. The words hovered above them: “dignity.” “empowerment.”

Few places were harder hit by Roe’s fall than the Rio Grande Valley, which lies south of San Antonio and abuts the state’s border with Mexico. Even before 2021, reproductive health care in the region had been difficult to come by — and abortion, while technically available, was only barely so in practice.

Continued: https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/052624_abortion_burdens/she-wanted-abortion-her-only-option-was-driving-mexico/

26.05.2024

self-managed abortion

Shefali Luthra

South Texans for Reproductive Justice

traveling to Mexico for abortion

Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in a Post-Roe America

Whole Woman’s Health

The Abortion Pill Underground

Since Roe was overturned, thousands of people in red states have found a way to get an abortion—often thanks to providers operating at the edge of the law.

AMY LITTLEFIELD
May 7, 2024

When Kay found out she was pregnant at the end of last year, she knew three things clearly. “I was poor and I had an unwanted pregnancy and knew I couldn’t afford a standard abortion for hundreds of dollars,” she told me. A 29-year-old student already raising one child, Kay lives in Texas, where abortion is banned. The nearest clinic she could find was at least a 12-hour drive away. But Kay thought there might be another option. “I went to Google and started searching if it was possible somehow to receive abortion pills through the Internet.”

It was not only possible; it was much easier and more affordable than Kay had expected. She found online services that offered to ship the same medications that were available in clinics right to her doorstep in Texas for $150 or, if she couldn’t afford that, for free. It seemed so simple that Kay thought it might be a scam. “I was scared I would wait for the pills and they wouldn’t work when I got them,” she said.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/telehealth-abortion-shield-laws/

07.05.2024