Mexican Abortion Activists Mobilize to Aid Texans
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
Mexico is a deeply Catholic nation where abortion was, for a long time, criminalized in many states; just a few years ago, Coahuila, near the U.S. border, imposed jail time on women who underwent the procedure. But, this year, as Stephania Taladrid reported, Mexico’s ten-member Supreme Court voted unanimously to decriminalize abortion throughout the country—a decision that shocked even longtime activists. Before Mexican pro-choice advocates had finished celebrating, though, they turned their attention north to Texas, which has, with Senate Bill 8, essentially banned most abortions. (The law is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.) Texans may now find themselves crossing the border to obtain legal abortions. Taladrid spoke to activists who are sending medications that induce abortion—which are available over the counter in Mexico—across the border into Texas. As the legal scholar Jeannie Suk Gersen explains, however, a new Texas law criminalizes delivering those medications to pregnant women, potentially placing these activists at risk.
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| 0:54.0 | So while abortion rights in the U.S. are being challenged at every turn, in Mexico, their |
| 0:59.4 | Supreme Court finally decriminalized abortion just this year. |
| 1:03.3 | Before that, abortion was illegal in much of the country. |
| 1:07.0 | Stefania Teledreid covered that story in Mexico for the New Yorker, and now she's thinking about what this might mean for the state of Texas. |
| 1:14.7 | Here's Stefania. |
| 1:17.4 | Abortion is a deeply polarizing issue in Mexico. |
| 1:22.2 | You need to remember that this is the world's second-largest Roman Catholic country. And even though the Supreme |
| 1:30.1 | Court had issued a series of remarkably liberal rulings in recent years, the unanimous |
| 1:37.2 | character of this ruling, which is a big surprise to even the feminist groups who had been |
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