Guanajuato (central Mexico)
From our special correspondent
On the wall, a map of the United States drawn by hand on a large white sheet. Green, blue, yellow, orange, pink: so many colors to demarcate state borders according to the degree of access to abortion and its level of criminalization. This map is not in the United States, but much further south: in Guanajuato, in central Mexico. More precisely in the house of Las Libres, a feminist association which has helped women to terminate their pregnancies using abortion pills since 2000, when the legislation did not yet allow it.
Along the Rio Bravo, everything has changed in two years: on September 7, 2021, the Supreme Court of Mexico decriminalized abortion, even except in cases of rape, while neighboring Texas criminalized it. Then, on June 24, 2022, the American Supreme Court revoked the “Roe v. Wade”, who had protected the right to abortion since 1973. “Since then, requests have exploded. We went from ten calls to a hundred per day”indicates Veronica Cruz, pioneer of Las Libres, financed by foundations and other foreign associations.
Thus, today, it is a historically conservative country which aims to be the defender of women’s rights in North America. Some of these calls are national: abortion remains difficult for Mexican women to access through health services, and it is mainly the associations which provide this service via the « companions »these activists who support people wishing to have an abortion. “Even in states where it is legal, some doctors refuse this right”regrets Veronica Cruz.
But, for two years, Las Libres mailboxes have been buzzing especially with requests from the United States. Lawyers and activists have acquired the English vocabulary necessary to be able to deal with various requests: “they come from English-speaking, Hispanic people; some rich, some less rich”. If these requests also come from other regions where the legislation has tightened, such as Florida, Mississippi and Oklahoma, it is the neighboring state, the very populous Texas, which remains the most requesting. To avoid having their mail sent to the United States intercepted by customs, Mexican activists transport the pills to border towns. “Then, either American women come and help themselves and go home with it; or Mexican women cross with boxes of pills in order to deliver them on American soil to collectives”confides Vanessa Jiménez, who founded an association in Monterrey, the largest city in the north of the country.
“On the day of the suspension of the decision “Roe v. Wade”, we received 700 requests from the United States, compared to 100 to 150 normally”she remembers. These requests most often come from groups that organize themselves in the shadows: “Many of them are the subject of legal proceedings. THE women are very afraid of being unmasked”Explain Vanessa Jiménez.
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