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


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


‘In 24 Hours, You’ll Have Your Pills’: American Women Are Traveling to Mexico for Abortions

Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, more women have been crossing the border to Mexico for abortion medications and procedures.

CARMEN VALERIA ESCOBAR
APR 3, 2024

At 6 pm, after a long day at work and with her children out of the house, Tania (not her real name) takes four pills and waits for them to melt under her tongue. Six hours later, the pills having dissolved and dispersed through her body, she begins to expel blood clots that she doesn’t look at. She bleeds, but she was told that this could be normal; her belly is in great pain, but she was also told that this would be normal. She cries in the darkness of her room in San Diego. She is afraid to be alone.

The pills that Tania took traveled amid the more than 90,000 people who cross the border every day between Tijuana, in Mexico, and San Diego. At the world’s busiest border crossing, the lines can stretch for blocks. People pass by hostile immigration officers searching for “illegals” among the thousands making the journey. Hidden in a suitcase are boxes of mifepristone and misoprostol, two abortifacients used in conjunction with one another. When Tania took them, she put them under her tongue to speed up the effect, as she was instructed. Mifepristone stops the production of progesterone, while misoprostol, which was originally indicated to treat ulcers, causes contractions and bleeding similar to a miscarriage.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/american-women-abortions-mexico/


‘Women need to know it is no longer a crime’: Mexico’s abortion companions – in pictures

Photographs by Mahé Elipe
Stephania Corpi
Mon 23 Oct 2023

For decades, acompañantas, or companions, have operated in secrecy to provide support for women to safely access terminations in Mexico. After abortion was decriminalised by the Mexican supreme court in September, they are still playing a role in getting the information across, as well as supporting women in neighbouring countries with stricter regimes, including the US.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2023/oct/23/women-need-to-know-it-is-no-longer-a-mexicos-abortion-companions-in-pictures


Latin America women’s rights groups say their abortion win in Mexico may hold the key to US struggle

Women’s rights activists in Latin America have long looked to the United States as a model in their decades-long struggle to chip away at abortion restrictions in their highly religious countries

By MEGAN JANETSKY, Associated Press
September 7, 2023

MEXICO CITY -- Women's rights activists in Latin America have long looked to the United States as a model in their decades-long struggle to chip away at abortion restrictions in their highly religious countries.

But after a historic Mexican Supreme Court ruling decriminalizing abortion on the federal level, some think U.S. activists should now turn to their counterparts south of the border as they navigate a post-Roe v. Wade reality.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/latin-america-womens-rights-groups-abortion-win-mexico-103018403


Mexican Activists Help US Women Get Abortion

April 11, 2023
by VOA

Marcela Castro’s office in Chihuahua is more than 150 kilometers from the United States-Mexico border. But the distance does not prevent her from assisting women in the U.S. to go around the recent bans on abortion, a medical procedure to end a pregnancy.

Castro and her coworkers work for Marea Verde Chihuahua. The organization of mostly volunteers has supported reproductive rights in northern Mexico since 2018. They provide virtual guidance and abortion pills for women who want to end a pregnancy on their own.

Continued: https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/mexican-activists-help-us-women-get-abortion/7034400.html


Activists’ network in Mexico helps U.S. women get abortions

A network of abortion-rights activists in Mexico is finding ways to offer assistance -- including shipments of abortion pills -- to women in the United States affected by recently imposed abortion bans in several states

By MARÍA TERESA HERNÁNDEZ, Associated Press
April 2, 2023

CHIHUAHUA, Mexico -- Marcela Castro’s office in Chihuahua is more than 100 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, yet the distance doesn’t prevent her from assisting women in the United States in circumventing recently imposed bans on abortion.

From the headquarters of Marea Verde Chihuahua, an organization that has supported reproductive rights in northern Mexico since 2018, Castro and her colleagues provide virtual guidance, as well as shipments of abortion pills for women who want to terminate a pregnancy on their own.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/activists-network-mexico-helps-us-women-abortions-98299876


Desperate pleas and smuggled pills: A covert abortion network rises after Roe

Amid legal and medical risks, a growing army of activists is funneling pills from Mexico into states that have banned abortion

By Caroline Kitchener
October 18, 2022

Monica had never used Reddit before. But sitting at her desk one afternoon in July — at least 10 weeks into an unwanted pregnancy in a state that had banned abortion — she didn’t know where else to turn.

“I need advice I am not prepared to have a child,” the 25-year-old wrote from her office, once everyone else had left for the day. She titled her post, “PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!”

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/18/illegal-abortion-pill-network/


The Post-Roe Abortion Underground

A multigenerational network of activists is getting abortion pills across the Mexican border to Americans.

By Stephania Taladrid
October 10, 2022

The handoff was planned for late afternoon on a weekday, at an underused trailhead in a Texas park. The young woman carrying the pills, whom I’ll call Anna, arrived in advance of the designated time, as was her habit, to throw off anyone who might try to use her license plates to trace her identity. She felt slightly absurd in her disguise—sun hat, oversized sunglasses, plain black mask. But the pills in her pocket were used to induce abortions, and in Texas, her home state, their distribution now required such subterfuge, along with burner phones and the encrypted messaging app Signal. Since late June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas and thirteen other states had effectively banned abortion, and more were sure to follow. In some of the states, laws that originated as far back as the nineteenth century had been restored. Providing the tools for an abortion in Texas had become a felony that could lead to years in prison, and a fellow-citizen could sue Anna and collect upward of ten thousand dollars for every abortion she was found to abet.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/17/the-post-roe-abortion-underground


One-third of American women have lost abortion rights since Roe v. Wade overturned

Shelley Connor
Aug 29, 2022

Nearly a third of American women, around 21 million, lost access to abortion immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. This week, trigger laws in five states have deprived even more of the right as trigger laws in states like Idaho and Texas went into effect. Thirty-six percent of American women will lose abortion rights should courts lift injunctions blocking anti-abortion legislation in other states.

On Thursday, legislation outlawing most abortions went into effect in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee. A stipulation in Idaho’s law, which would have made it illegal for doctors to perform abortions to preserve the mother’s health, was blocked by a federal judge. In Texas, abortion providers now face felony charges and can be sentenced to life in prison.

Continued: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/29/ickq-a29.html