In Chihuahua, Mexico, the Marea Verde Chihuahua collective gathers at its headquarters. Since 2018, a group of volunteers has supported reproductive rights in northern Mexico by sending out abortion pills and offering virtual counseling to women who want to end a pregnancy on their own.
This has sparked requests from the United States after the Supreme Court ends the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.
Mexico helping US women avoid abortion bans
More than 100 miles separate Marcela Castro’s office in Chihuahua from the US-Mexico border, but that doesn’t stop her from helping American women get around recently enacted abortion bans.
For women who choose to end a pregnancy on their own, Castro and her colleagues send abortion pills from the offices of Marea Verde Chihuahua, an organization that has supported reproductive rights in northern Mexico since 2018.
When the Supreme Court moved to erase the constitutional right to abortion last year, this abortion model, in which no travel, clinics, or prescriptions are required, attracted curiosity in the US and an uptick in requests for assistance.
Yet, the model was created by Mexican activists after years of struggle against abortion restrictions and bans in the majority of Mexico’s 32 states.
Castro and her coworkers were taught to become “acompaantes”—capable of functioning as a guide and partner, whether in person or from a distance—in order to securely counsel women on self-managed medical abortions.
They have thoroughly examined national abortion regulations, and they are familiar with several World Health Organization protocols by heart.
Read more: Is it possible to have both Medicare and Medicaid; what’s the difference?
Mexican women face a US-like situation
The situation facing Mexican women is similar to that in the US, where more than a dozen states, including Texas, have enacted broad abortion prohibitions.
In two-thirds of Mexico’s states, abortion is regarded as a felony unless it is justified under specific conditions.
But by the time they are 45, at least one in three women will have had an abortion.
The study demonstrates that women do not have enough control over their medical care.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists claims that they are also having difficulty getting abortions, which forces them to do more intrusive operations.
From 1995 and 2000, there were 175,139 more abortions performed on women per year than there were in 1995 (154,300).
Read more: Plastics are responsible for cancer and birth deformities, study reveals
