For years Mexican women crossed the border for an abortion in the U.S.  Until medication was developed which can terminate a pregnancy the options in Mexico were limited in the second most Roman Catholic country in the world. Following the unanimous Mexican Supreme Court September decision ruling the border State of Coahuila’s anti-abortion law unconstitutional, Mexican activists have been offering assistance to Texas women seeking an abortion. 

Co-founder of the Coahuila women’s rights organization Accompañtes Laguna, Laura Hernández, told The New Yorker they had already helped 3 U.S. women and are establishing the protocol to aid more.  “It’s painful to know that not everyone can access the same rights,” Hernández said. “We feel a great responsibility toward women there.” 

Two drugs enable a woman to terminate a pregnancy.  While they both require a prescription in the U.S., in Mexico they are prescribed for treatment of gastric ulcers and other disorders and sold over the counter.  As the Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk Gerson explains however, a new Texas law criminalizes delivering those medications to women in the seventh week of pregnancy and beyond, potentially placing at risk anyone making them available.

Another Mexican Right to Choose organization, Las Libres (“The Free Ones”) is now busy building a “confidential network to give women instructions on use of the drugs and accompanying them throughout the procedure.” They offer close oversight on the day the medication is administered and daily check-ins thereafter.   A Las Libres organizer was asked if she is worried about being sued in the U.S. for aiding the women.  “No, not really.”  When asked if Las Libres has found a way around the TX law she responded, “We are doing it.”

In the U.S. today, the right to abortion is threatened  as never before since the historic 1972 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.   Laws restricting access to abortion and calling for harsh penalties if violated are being considered and passed in many States with Republican majority legislatures.  In Texas with the 2021 SB 8 TX law, the New York Times wrote that  “effectively, nearly all abortions in the state have been banned since the law went into effect.”

Appointment during the Trump administration of a sixth conservative justice to the 9 member U.S. Supreme Court has placed on alert activists and the public majority in the country which favors a woman’s right to choose.  With the Court decision to hear arguments in December against a harsh new Mississippi anti-abortion law, Mexican women’s assistance of women in Texas and other States takes on added significance.

Although a minority, the strategies of packing U.S. courts with ideological conservatives, taking control of State legislatures and further restricting access to voting have paid off for Republicans.  Some of the super wealthy intent on expanding their fortunes are bank rolling right wing thinkers in universities, foundations and politics.  At a time when U.S. young adults openly denounce capitalism, some conservative voices have been heard espousing authoritarian rule and the pitfalls of democracy.  Utah Senator Mike Lee wrote a pair of tweets last fall arguing that “democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace and prosperity are.”

Throughout the “American century”, as the publisher Henry Luce named the last century, U.S. relations with other nations sought to promote capitalist economic policies as essential to a democracy.  It now seems likely that this doctrine will be increasingly disputed by partisans of the right and the left.  In such a time of confusion and uncertainty, with little consensus on what is truth and its most reliable source, some of us find cause for hope in the actions and voices of world citizens outside the U.S.

The solidarity of Mexican women with U.S. women choosing to have an abortion is another example of the role of international support and solidarity in the defense and progress of human rights in the world today.  Christians celebrated Sunday November 28 as the first Sunday of Advent, the coming of Jesus of Nazareth.  Traditionally, the theme for that Sunday is hope.  As we contemplate sources of hope in our lives, on the social plane the work of the Mexican activists on behalf of us all stands out.