A new border crossing: Americans turn to Mexico for abortions

Sep. 25, 2023 at 3:43 pm



| Verónica Cruz Sánchez, the founder and leader of Las Libres, in the library at Las Libres house in Guanajuato, Mexico on Dec. 10, 2021. Cruz, who helped found a reproductive rights organization in Mexico, said she has helped roughly 20,000 American women in 23 different states to secure abortion pills. (Marian Carrasquero / The New York Times)

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Edyra Espriella
The New York Times

MEXICO CITY — The text message Cynthia Menchaca received this summer was one she was seeing more and more: A woman living in Texas said she had left a violent relationship only to discover she was pregnant, and she desperately wanted an abortion. The woman had learned that Menchaca could send her abortion pills from Mexico, where the procedure has been decriminalized in several states.

But the growing U.S. demand for abortion care is not limited to deliveries of medication, according to advocates such as Menchaca, who lives in Coahuila state in northeastern Mexico.

Clinics in Tijuana and Mexico City, as well as activists in the northwestern city of Hermosillo, say they have seen women crossing the border from Texas, Louisiana and Arizona seeking access to abortion.

“Before, the women from Sonora would go to the United States to access abortions in clinics,” said Andrea Sanchez, an abortion-rights activist, referring to the Mexican state that borders Arizona. “And now the women from the United States come to Mexico.”

More:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/a-new-border-crossing-americans-turn-to-mexico-for-abortions/