The New Abortion Underground

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the contributor Stephania Taladrid has been following a network of women who are secretly distributing abortion pills across the United States. The network has its roots in Mexico, where some medications used for at-home abortion are available at a lower cost over the counter. Volunteers—they call themselves “pill fairies”—are sourcing the pills at Mexican pharmacies and bringing them over the border. The work is increasingly perilous: in states like Texas, abetting an abortion is considered a felony, carrying long prison sentences. But, to Taladrid’s sources, it’s imperative. “I mean, there’s nothing else to do, right?” one woman in Texas, who had an abortion using the medication she received from a pill fairy, said. “You can’t just lie down and accept it. You can’t.” Note: The interview excerpts featured in this story (with the exception of Verónica Cruz) are not the actual voices of Taladrid’s subjects. To protect their anonymity, the excerpts were re-recorded by actors. Read Stephania Taladrid’s full reporting at newyorker.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.9	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:13.5	Since Roe v. Wade fell, a network of activists has been putting medications used for at-home abortions
0:19.7	into the hands of women who have lost the constitutional right
0:23.2	to reproductive choice.
0:25.5	So they actually started calling themselves the pill fairies,
0:29.6	and this is a collective of women
0:33.1	who range an age from 30 to 82,
0:38.4	and they each have a different role in this network.
0:44.4	Stephanie Ataladreid has been reporting for the New Yorker on abortion since well before the Dobbs decision.
0:49.8	Steph, this is now the first time that we're hearing from women who are really doing this,
0:54.1	sometimes at great personal risk. Where does it start? Who's coordinating this effort?
0:59.5	So the woman coordinating this is Veronica Cruz. She's a legendary activist based in Mexico,
1:05.0	and she runs an organization called Las Leveres, which means the free ones. She started Las L'Libres
1:10.1	back in the early 2000s when abortion was criminalized in Mexico.
1:14.5	It's since been decriminalized.
1:16.8	And I've been talking with her about the model that she developed called Accompaniamiento.
1:21.5	The idea is one person, the Accompaniente, brings pills along with tips about how to use them to women in need of abortion.
1:40.7	I met with Veronica in Guantra, her home state in central Mexico.
1:45.0	That was in early August.
1:46.9	And she told me how she first developed this model for women there, who were sexual assault survivors.
1:52.7	The idea was to make abortion not just more accessible for them, but less frightening.
	...

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