Mexican Networks Ramp Up Help for US Women Seeking Abortions María Verza - Associated Press
go to original June 29, 2022

Mexican and U.S. abortion advocates gather on day two of a three day meeting to discuss their coordinated efforts to support women in the U.S. seeking abortion services under increasingly restrictive state laws, in Matamoros, Mexico. (Maria Verza/AP)

Networks of Mexican feminist collectives working with counterparts in the United States are ramping up their efforts to help women in the U.S. who are losing access to abortion services to end their pregnancies.

With the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the landmark decision that gave women the right to access abortion last week, these networks of activists are preparing to be busier than ever. So far this year, according to the organizations, they have helped at least 1,700 women living the U.S. who have sought their help.

The number may seem anecdotal, but it’s exponentially higher than what they saw before. With a number of U.S. states already enacting abortion bans since the court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, the activists expect the pace to continue increasing.

“The demand is going to triple,” said Sandra Cardona of “I Need an Abortion,” a collective based in the northern Mexico city of Monterrey, 138 miles from Texas. “Before we accompanied about five women a month from the United States; now there are five to seven a week.”

These organizations’ strategy is clear: a self-managed abortion, that is to say, putting the abortion-inducing misoprostol and mifepristone in the hands of women who want to end their pregnancies and accompanying them, usually virtually, when they take the drugs.

The drugs are legal in the United States and more than half of the abortions performed there in 2020 used them, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization. But there they require a doctor’s prescription, some states require a doctor to be present and they are usually taken in women’s health clinics, many of which have been forced to close.

Read the rest at WSLS.com

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