They provide medicine and provide medical advice
Activists in Mexico support American women to have safe home abortion
Activist groups collect medicines to facilitate home abortion.
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US laws are strict about the termination of pregnancy.
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Veronica Cruz talks with American women online.
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A women's demonstration demanding the right to abortion in Texas.
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Veronica Cruz has spent years defying the law, in Mexico, helping thousands of women to have abortions.
Now, with Mexico declaring abortion no longer a punishable crime, Cruz and activists like her plan to move their mission to a country moving in the opposite direction, the United States.
Abortion restrictions have been tightened across the United States over the past years, including in Texas, which lies on the Mexican border.
The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case that could relax or completely repeal a 1973 law that established a constitutional right to abortion, potentially leading to new restrictions in at least 20 states.
But in many Latin American countries, where abortion has long been highly restricted, highly organized feminist groups have been distributing abortion-inducing drugs for years, making it difficult for governments to enforce a ban. Cruz and other activists plan to help receive American women from Texas and other states seeking abortions in Mexico, as well as build networks to transport or mail abortion pills north of the border, something activists have already started and are now planning to expand. "We are not afraid, and we are ready to face criminalization, because women's lives are more important than laws," Cruz says.
The strategy of these activists is controversial, in large part, because it includes foreign activists, working directly to undermine US law.
It also illustrates what activists on both sides see as a new battlefront: the government's ability to control abortion, when women can perform it at home, with the help of pills that are more widely available than ever before.
The US Food and Drug Administration said abortion drugs can be delivered by mail, making it a permanent measure, being taken due to the pandemic, to expand access for women who find it difficult to travel to a provider, to terminate their pregnancies.
But many states prohibit mail delivery of these pills, or still require that the drugs be distributed in person by providers, in addition to other restrictions on their use.
heavy penalties
In Texas, a new law prohibits doctors from giving abortion pills after seven weeks of pregnancy, and includes prison sentences and a fine of up to $10,000 for those who mail the drug.
Legal experts say such laws could be challenged after the FDA's decision, but for now, these state actions could discourage American doctors from sending abortion pills to parts of the country with restrictive regulations.
“For the first time, Texas has a way to protect women, through our criminal law, from people who bring in dangerous abortion pills,” says Joe Baughman, executive director of the Texas for Life Alliance, an organization that helped shape the measure. “We will have to wait and see how it is implemented in the coming months.”
Anti-abortion groups acknowledge that criminally punishing activists who distribute the pills, especially if they are from Mexico, can be difficult.
Experts say they will have to be arrested, arrested in Texas, or extradited.
“This is a truly outrageous, outlaw attack,” John Sego, director of Texas Right to Life, said of Mexican activists' plan to help Texas women with abortion, adding that such efforts would "make it difficult to enforce (US) laws." ».
Safe way
Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the leader of AidAccess, an Austria-based group that provides abortion pills to women around the world, confirmed that she was prescribing the drug to women in Texas who receive the drugs by mail from a pharmacy in India, even after the entry into force of the law. The mandate goes into effect, this month.
The drug misoprostol, which was originally created to treat stomach ulcers but also causes abortion, has changed access to abortion worldwide by giving women a safe, effective and often cheap way to terminate their pregnancies. alone.
Taking this medicine, either alone or with another medicine called "Mifepristone", leads to a so-called "medical abortion".
Across Latin America, networks of activists, operating on the fringes of the legal system, provide women with pills, instructing them to use the drug to terminate pregnancy.
The groups, often in coordination with collaborators in the medical community, use a model known as "accompaniment", where they distribute pills and also provide medical advice and psychological support to women in Catholic areas, where abortions are often avoided and prohibited.
• 10 thousand dollars fine for anyone who sends abortion medicine by mail in Texas.
Free operations
Giselle Carino, who heads Fos Vimensta, an international coalition of health groups, said that the arrival of misoprostol and mifepristone was "very important", explaining, "But these drugs would not have been so effective in saving women's lives, had it not been for the accompanying feminist networks, and professionals Health professionals who are ready to engage in the operation.
Mexican activist Veronica Cruz helped found an organization called Las Libres, which means "the free", in 2000. She began knocking on the doors of gynecologists in her conservative state of Guanajuato, asking them to provide free abortions to rape victims.
A companion for every woman
A few years later, one of the doctors, who had been working with activist Veronica Cruz, returned from a conference with good news.
There has been a drug that can cause an abortion, safely, at home.
Misoprostol can be obtained without a prescription in Mexico, and the World Health Organization has a protocol that allows abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
At that time, pills were very expensive.
So, Cruz says, she came up with a strategy: The woman who is able to buy the drug will keep the remaining pills after her procedure, then pass the box on to the next woman who needs it, while she's trained to do so.
The activist says the goal was not just to perform abortions, the goal was to turn every Mexican woman into someone who could help someone else abort.
The employees who work with Las Libres have boxes of drugs they buy or receive as donations, strewn everywhere, in their cars, homes and even their pockets.
A "companion" is assigned to each woman who communicates with the group, to receive her pills, and then follow up via video calls, phone calls or WhatsApp messages, during each step of the abortion.
A recent study of more than 900 people in Nigeria and Argentina, published in the medical journal The Lancet, found that accompanying patients as they administer their abortions was "extremely effective and safe".
For 97% of the women surveyed, the abortion process was successful.
unified strategy
American Erica Sandoval, 23, said that she had an abortion at home this month in Mexico, after an activist reporter for the Las Libres group run by activist Veronica Cruz.
She got the medication from the activist's sister, followed the instructions on a voice memo, and completed the process, two days later.
Sophia, 23, said she took the medication at home, which she shares with her parents in Mexico.
She was messaging a woman from the cruise group.
Sophia said that when she finished, she told her parents that she was feeling sick after eating tacos.
Dozens of activists meet in January to develop a unified strategy.
One of them, Crystal Lyra, said she had already brought pills from Tijuana to California, then shipped them to Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts and Texas.
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