In June, Mexico elected its first female president—a historic moment for both Mexico and the U.S. At a time when gender-based violence is at a record high, Mexico’s change in leadership has created a new opportunity to place the reproductive rights of women and girls at the forefront of gender and healthcare policy.
Advancing reproductive choice for women and girls should be a top policy priority for President Claudia Sheinbaum’s term. Anyone who needs an abortion should be able to access high-quality, affordable care—whether that’s Mexican women, women traveling from other Latin American countries or American women confronting abortion bans with increasingly restrictive policies sweeping the United States.
As a leader in a global health organization, I have seen firsthand how access to abortion makes a world of difference for women in Mexico and all over the region. Our organization, MSI Reproductive Choices, provides contraception and safe abortion care to women and girls in 36 different countries and six continents worldwide. The reason I do this work is straightforward: I want to help women take control of their lives.
Reproductive choice allows women and girls to decide for themselves whether to pursue education or prioritize careers. It allows them to establish independence, stability and self-direction in their own lives.
Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: When women are denied access to essential reproductive healthcare, they’re often forced to risk their lives—resorting to desperate and unsafe measures—or forced to continue unwanted pregnancies, sometimes robbed of their chances to further their education and professional prospects.
In Mexico and across the Latin American region, I’ve seen instances of mothers struggling to support themselves, their families and their children. Gender-based violence is a real issue that our country is currently grappling with, and I have even met one young woman no older than 30 raising 10 children as a result of repeated abuse and rape. If these women were able to access reproductive choice and support, their lives could look completely different. Access to abortion allows women to choose what’s right for their own health, lives and futures.
If these women were able to access reproductive choice and support, their lives could look completely different.
Twelve of Mexico’s 31 states have decriminalized abortion, with two more to come. State decriminalization is a step in the right direction, but the reality is that while abortion services are legal in those states, many people’s actual ability to access care is still quite low. While Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled that abortion should not be criminalized anywhere nationwide, that right remains limited in states that have not yet voted to decriminalize. If women can’t find affordable care services due to a lack of available medication or providers, then decriminalization only goes so far when it comes to practical access to care.
Many women from the United States and other Latin American countries travel to Mexico to seek care. Our center in Saltillo helped a woman who had driven six hours from Texas because she was so desperate for services no longer available to her at home. We also see many women from California at our Tijuana clinic, particularly from border cities like San Diego. The patients we see there are often bilingual, but we have staff on hand for women who only speak English. Mexico is a lifeline for women who live near the border. And while the monetary cost of abortion is lower than it is in the United States, the quality of care we provide is just as high—we adhere to the highest U.S. and global standards of reproductive care. In fact, MSI Mexico provides training for American medical students whose schools don’t offer abortion provision in their curriculum.
Mexico is a lifeline for women who live near the border.
The need for high-quality care, coupled with an influx in patients, is where organizations like ours come in to help fill the access gap. But we cannot do it alone; we need Mexico’s newly elected president and government leadership to work alongside us to make equitable access to care a reality. Decriminalization—even universal legality—is not the same as abortion being available in every community. That’s why MSI has been working to open centers providing high-quality, affordable care. No matter who you are or where you live, anyone who wants a safe, legal abortion should be able to get one.
President Sheinbaum should take real steps toward closing the gap in access by prioritizing the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls. This means funding new clinics, training new doctors and making medication abortion more accessible. By providing these critical reproductive healthcare options, we are bound to expand access to myriad opportunities for women across the Americas, and allow women to choose their own futures.
Editor’s note: At-home abortions via medication abortion are legal, safe and available in all 50 states. The organization Plan C has a comprehensive guide to finding abortion pills on their website, which is continually updated and has all the latest information on where to find abortion pills from anywhere in the U.S.
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