A History of Abortion Undergrounds—and a Guide to Starting One

Journalist Rebecca Grant shifts the abortion conversation away from laws and morals to focus on access: getting people the care they seek.

Jessie Kindig
August 4, 2025

On a rainy evening in June 2001, abortion pirates sailed into Dublin harbor. Their converted fishing trawler had a portable clinic bolted to the deck, and the cargo included 20 doses of medication abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol), thousands of condoms, 120 IUDs, and 250 morning-after pills. The ship’s nearly all-female crew included a nurse and a gynecologist and was led by Rebecca Gomperts, a freckled and dark-haired Dutch doctor in her mid-thirties. The boat made its way up the River Liffey and docked close to a waiting crowd of activists and journalists.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/198369/abortion-undergrounds-history-guide

How a $5 Pack of Abortion Pills in Ethiopia Sparked a Movement to ‘Demedicalize’ Access in the U.S.

In her new book, Access, Rebecca Grant chronicles activists' decades-long fight to defy abortion restrictions—including the origin story of Plan C.

By Rebecca Grant
June 24, 2025

This is an excerpt from Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom, by Rebecca Grant. The book chronicles activists’ decades-long mission to defy abortion restrictions and fight for reproductive freedom, from the U.S. to France, Mexico, the Netherlands, and more.

In 2014, Elisa Wells and Francine Coeytaux were positioned outside a pharmacy in Ethiopia waiting for a colleague to come out. The pharmacy was sandwiched between two stores with green signs that read “Fujifilm Digital Print Shop” and set back from the bustling red-and-yellow sidewalk. A few moments later, their companion, a woman, emerged holding a box. White and light brown with a yellow rose and branded as a “Safe-T” kit, its label read: “This pack contains treatment for early medical abortion.”

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/how-a-5-pack-of-abortion-pills-in-ethiopia-sparked-a-movement-to-demedicalize-access-in-the-u-s

Inside Mexican Feminists’ Fight For Safe and Legal Abortion

Rebecca Grant on the Battle for Reproductive Freedom in Latin America and Throughout the World

By Rebecca Grant
June 24, 2025

Abortion had been a federal crime in Mexico since 1931, but every state within the country permitted abortion for pregnancies that resulted from rape, and others allowed it if the life of the mother was in danger or in the event of severe fetal anomalies. So when the legislature in Guanajuato, a state in central Mexico, proposed in 2000 to revoke the lone exception to the state’s abortion ban, Verónica “Vero” Cruz thought something along the lines of “Oh hell no.” Eliminating the provision would have resulted in a total ban in a place plagued by sexual violence, and Cruz, a respected activist and the leader of Las Libres, a recently formed feminist collective in Guanajuato, was not about to let the meager sliver of abortion rights that existed in her state shrink any further, or women’s well-being to be used as a political pawn. Something had to be done.

Continued: https://lithub.com/inside-mexican-feminists-fight-for-safe-and-legal-abortion/

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