Those in the United States involved in building volunteer networks that help people safely terminate pregnancies on their own face potential legal risks both criminally and civilly.
The stream of pings and messages through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp reach Sandra Cardona Alanís at her home in this mountainous region of northern Mexico. She is an acompañante and a founder of Necesito Abortar México, a volunteer network that has helped thousands of people across Mexico access abortion, usually at home, by providing medication and support.
Even before the full effects of Roe v. Wade’s reversal kick in, Texas is being stitched into the Mexican system as the networks build out their models of helping provide safe abortion at home on an international scale. For months, they’ve been helping train volunteers that will prop up new U.S.-based networks. And they have moved thousands of doses of abortion medication into the United States, creating informal stockpiles to more easily distribute the drugs.
But that autonomy, Cardona Alanís and her partner Vanessa Jiménez Rubalcava often say, changes everything. Thousands of people were reported to law enforcement between 2010 and 2020. Hundreds were investigated, and many were criminally convicted. Some were reported by their own doctors or medical staff at hospitals where they sought care.
“Generally, abortion at home has always been relevant in Mexico,” said Isabel Fulda Graue, the deputy director of the Information Group on Reproductive Choice, a leading abortion rights group in Mexico known as GIRE. “The accompaniment model basically came out of living through those restrictive years.”
Those reforms made way for a still expanding collection of public and private abortion clinics, particularly in Mexico City. That progress did not mark an end for the acompañamiento model, but made it even more crucial, particularly for low-income people and those outside major cities who otherwise still would not have access.
Leaders within Mexican accompaniment networks have built deep relationships with abortion providers in Mexico City with whom they consult informally. The result is a system described by those leaders and abortion advocates as the vanguard of abortion care. Today, the married couple’s life revolves around abortion. They run the Necesito Abortar México network, which they founded almost six years ago, out of their modest Monterrey home on a residential street backdropped by the famous Cerro de la Silla. They used to offer up their bedroom to people who could not carry out abortions in their own homes but have since converted Jiménez Rubalcava’s old office into a small studio so it can serve as a homestay.
Jiménez Rubalcava offered her visitor advice on what to take in case of pain and gently emphasized the need to stay nourished throughout the process. We are here to support you through this, she reminded the visitor. The distribution chains begin in places like Monterrey and Guanajuato, sourced from local supplies collected by the networks but also with drug donations from Canada. The drugs enter the United States through a dozen volunteers who cross the border with the pills in their luggage, in candy bags or in wrapped gifts. Some of them are elderly women with prescriptions in hand for misoprostol to purportedly treat stomach ulcers.
“Speaking in terms of legal resolutions is difficult because I think different people operating under different circumstances in different jurisdictions are going to have different answers,” Cortez said. “People looking for answers may not be able to find them.” “Now, it’s the U.S.’s turn to take to the streets for their rights,” Cardona Alanís said, noting that may mean taking on work, like acompañamiento, that lies beyond existing norms — and the law. “The objective is for women to have access to their rights so that not a single person is left behind.”
Cardona Alanís offered a recent example in which she heard from a woman in Ohio seeking help and wanting to travel to Mexico. She mentioned it to a Texas colleague who had abortion-inducing medication on hand and offered to help so the woman wouldn’t have to travel internationally. The Texan ultimately connected the Ohio woman with colleagues in her own state that accompanied her at home.
Mexican network leaders say there is security within their model because it is decentralized. Medication abortion, they also argue, is dificult to trace. For months, Mexico City’s top health official — Secretary of Health Dr. Oliva López Arellano — has said publicly that the system has the capacity to extend its abortion care to serve a potential influx of people from the United States.
A van with messages purporting to help with abortions parked at the entrance of a hospital where legal abortions are performed in Mexico City on July 1, 2022. Signs inside the hospital explain that the group operating the van tries to persuade women not to have abortions.A sign reading in part “The legal interruption of a pregnancy is your right” at the entrance of Hospital Materno Infantil Inguarán in Mexico City.
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