Introducing "The Network" from NPR and Futuro Media

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News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Documentary

4.8 • 11.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Decades ago, Brazilian women made a discovery that allowed them to have safe abortions without a doctor, regardless of the law. Now, as abortion restrictions rise across the United States, their method is shaping how American women have abortions, too.

In this three-part series, hosts Victoria Estrada and Marta Martinez of Futuro Media's Latino USA chart the global, loosely connected network that brought this abortion method to millions of women.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	June 24th, 2022.
0:03.0	The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
0:06.7	Abortion was no longer protected by the Constitution.
0:10.3	And abortion rights supporters were grappling with the change.
0:13.5	People are just absolutely terrified.
0:16.4	Women are suffering. Women will die.
0:20.0	But around the same time, all over Latin America, the opposite was happening.
0:27.5	Countries were lifting abortion bans.
0:30.4	In Argentina and Mexico.
0:33.0	Colombia, too.
0:36.7	It was like women in Latin America and women in the United States had traded places.
0:46.3	But for the last several decades, these women had been trading something else too.
0:52.7	It was spreading by word of mouth.
0:55.8	I was like, what?
0:58.0	No way.
0:59.3	A huge discovery.
1:01.0	We just started hearing that patients were taking some pills.
1:08.7	You can have a safe abortion and you can do it at home.
1:13.1	This is the story of that discovery.
1:15.9	But more than that, it's the story of the women behind it.
1:20.0	It's just friends.
1:21.5	It's mothers, it's sisters.
	...

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