Facing high medical costs and pressure to reconsider, a single mother living in California turned to activists across the border in Mexico who helped her have an abortion.
‘We’re supposed to be in a free country, in a state where you can smoke marijuana, but abortion is still somewhat taboo,’ the 31-year-old said, shortly before the US Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to the procedure.
The woman, of Mexican descent, believes terminating a pregnancy will now become ever harder, although the liberal West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington jointly vowed to defend abortion rights.
The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn the nationwide right to abortion gives all 50 states the freedom to ban the procedure, and nearly half are expected to do so in some form.
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Even before the ruling, accessing a safe abortion in the United States was already ‘complicated if you don’t have money,’ said the mother of three, who works in a restaurant in San Diego.
She initially visited two clinics in the United States, but at both the cost of the procedure was almost $1,000, which she could not afford.
At one of the facilities, which had religious links, she was discouraged from having an abortion.
‘They told me there were other options, that I could give it up for adoption. But I was determined, desperate,’ she told reporters by telephone, explaining that she got pregnant because contraceptives failed.
Through a friend, the woman learned about Colectiva Bloodys, a non-government organization in Tijuana just south of San Diego that is part of a cross-border network providing free assistance to women in the United States who cannot access an abortion.
‘I was surprised that they helped me from Mexico. I thought that we were more liberal here,’ she said.
‘Everything moved very quickly there. In less than a day they said ‘here’s the solution,’ the woman said.
She was sent a combination of medication that ends a pregnancy by causing the uterus to contract, a method considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO), mainly for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The NGO responded quickly to any follow-up questions and “was always supportive,” she added.
Colectiva Bloodys has sent these treatments to conservative-led US states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Georgia for a few years and expects more requests following the Supreme Court ruling, said one of its members, Crystal Perez Lira.
‘It’s very unfortunate, a huge setback; but we are going to have the capacity and the will’ to offer support, Perez Lira said.
Mexican activists had already been surprised by the amount of interest from women in the United States in the cross-border network, launched in January in the face of obstacles to accessing a safe abortion.
