Mexico Emerges as a Destination for Americans Seeking Reproductive Health Services…Not for the First Time

BY ALEJANDRA MARQUEZ GUAJARDO

 MAY 7, 2024
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When its six-week abortion ban went into effect on May 1, 2024, Florida joined nearly two dozen other U.S. states that ban abortion or greatly restrict it.

These laws came into effect after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade ended nearly 50 years of the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

Florida health officials in 2023 reported more than 84,000 abortions statewide, including nearly 7,800 from out-of-state residents.

The Tampa Bay Times recently reported that about 2 in 5 abortions in Florida over the past six years occurred in the first six weeks of pregnancy, meaning that roughly 60% of the procedures performed over that time frame would be illegal under the new restrictions.

The new laws in Florida and other states are sending some Americans across the border into Mexico to access an abortion, where the procedure was legalized in recent years.

Clinics in Mexico do not require proof of residency, so solid numbers about who they are treating are hard to come by. But providers in Mexico report they have been seeing more Americans.

In 2022, Luisa García, director of Profem, an abortion clinic in the border city of Tijuana, told NPR that the percentage of patients coming from the United States had jumped from 25% to 50% in just the two months following the Dobbs decision.

My research and teaching focuses on gender and sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean. I often ask students to think about the differences between the United States and Latin America — and the struggles the two regions share.

Different paths

In recent years, the U.S. and Mexico have each struggled over access to abortion care, with the two countries moving in opposite directions.

The year before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled the criminalization of abortion by the northern state of Coahuila unconstitutional. This decision set a precedent that led to decriminalization at the federal level in 2023.

Change has since been slow. Only 13 of Mexico’s 31 states have modified their penal codes to reflect the court’s resolution, with Jalisco being the latest state to do so, in April 2024.

Unlike in the U.S., federal laws in Mexico do not automatically overrule local ones. But Mexican women living in states where abortions are illegal can still have one in a federally run hospital or clinic. And the federal statute protects the staff of those facilities from punishment.

Marea Verde movement

A crucial force behind the legalization of abortion care in Latin America is a movement called Green Tide, or Marea Verde, which emerged in Argentina and expanded across the region over the past two decades.

Although it began as a collective fight for abortion rights, Green Tide has grown to encompass issues such as the prevention of violence against women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as femicide – the violent death of women motivated by gender.

Expansion of abortion access in Mexico

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022, Mexican organizations offering abortions have expanded locations to increase choices for Mexican and U.S. residents seeking care. For example, Fundación MSI opened its newest clinic in Cancún late last year.

It chose this location intentionally, MSI’s Latin America regional managing director told the health news website Stat. Cancún’s status as a popular tourist destination means that multiple U.S. airports offer direct flights for about US$400 round trip. In-person abortion services range from $250 to $350. MSI’s website caters to Americans by offering information in English and featuring links to search for flights.

To assist those traveling to Mexico, Mexican and American abortion rights groups created the Red Transfronteriza, a transnational network that supports those crossing the border in search of care but whose primary mission has become the shipping of misoprostol and mifepristone, the pills generally used to induce abortions, into the United States.

One group that is part of the network on the Mexican side of the border is Guanajuato-based Las Libres, or The Free Ones. In September 2023, its founder estimated that her organization had sent abortion pills to approximately 20,000 women in the U.S. since the Dobbs decision.

Red Necesito Abortar, or I Need to Abort Network, was founded in 2017 by Sandra Cardona and Vanessa Jimenez in the northern city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, to help those seeking abortion services.

History of abortion, US-Mexico border

Although the Dobbs decision brought renewed attention to the issue, the relationship between the United States and Mexico and people from both countries seeking abortions has a long history.

Women’s studies professor Lina-María Murillo, who studies the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and teaches a course on global reproduction, explains that abortion in the United States was legal and performed by midwives before the Civil War. In the following decades, declining birth rates and gender inequality led to restrictions across the country and a nationwide ban in 1910.

As Murillo’s research has documented, criminalization led women seeking abortions to travel to Mexico more than a century ago.

These border crossings ultimately declined as Mexican abortion restrictions were enforced and clinics shut down by the late 1960s. At the same time, U.S. activists and doctors contributed to the narrative that portrayed Mexico as a dangerous place where “back alley” abortions were performed by “butcher” physicians. Murillo argues that these myths contributed to a loosening of abortion restrictions in several U.S. states like California and New Mexico, helping set the stage for Roe v. Wade.

As elections loom closer in the United States, abortion will likely take center stage once again – including in Florida, where a referendum to reverse the six-week ban will be on the November ballot.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pezzullo: The Warmonger Who Won’t Go Away

BY BINOY KAMPMARK

 MAY 7, 2024Facebook

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Photograph Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security – Public Domain

The compromised former top boss of the Australian civil service has the lick and smell of belligerence.  Begrudgingly conceding error and when in office, a bully and meddler in party politics, an incessant advocate of threats visible and invisible, Mike Pezzulo switches into a warmonger’s gear with ease.

The former secretary of the Department of Home Affairs was sacked last November after revelations that he had used WhatsApp to communicate with abandon with former New South Wales Liberal Party deputy director Scott Briggs.  Those messages, unearthed in a joint investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, confirmed what many already knew: Pezzullo’s voracious appetite for meddling in the party politics of the Coalition government while denigrating fellow public servants and a number of politicians.

In August 2018, for instance, Pezzullo offered Briggs his gamey views ahead of the Liberal Party revolt that would see the overthrow of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.  “I don’t want to interfere but you won’t be surprised to hear that in the event of Scomo [Scott Morrison] getting up I would like to see [Peter] Dutton come back to HA [Home Affairs].  No reason for him to stay on the backbench that I can see.”

An inquiry into his conduct led by Lynelle Briggs found Pezzullo in breach of the Public Service Code of Conduct on various grounds.  14 breaches were identified from five broader allegations, including failures to maintain confidentiality regarding sensitive government information, maintain an apolitical stance, and disclosing a conflict of interest. Most fundamentally, he had misused his offence and standing to benefit or advantage himself.

Last month heralded his return to the public arena, tinged by a sense of desperation that he wants to be taken seriously again.  On the ABC’s 7.30 program, he admitted to making “mistakes” and accepted “the finding that no matter how rough and tumble there is in a place like Canberra, that the gaining of influence and the personal advantage to be gained by way of certain channels of communication, whether it’s to the prime minister or anyone else, crosses the line in terms of conduct.”  Showing the mildest contrition, Pezzullo claimed he had “paid a price.”  Hardly.

With such preliminaries out of the way, he could return to one of his favourite passtimes: warning about the Yellow-Red threat emanating from Australia’s north.  He accepted that the prospect of a war with China was “actually quite low [but] the consequences would be significant and indeed catastrophic.”  A meaningless percentage of such an eventuality was plucked out of thin air: 10 per cent.  Notwithstanding that statistic of potential conflict, it was “meaningful enough to plan for and indeed to be concerned about.”

Focus, he insisted, should be directed to the dangers of cyber and cognitive warfare. Cyber and critical infrastructure were “vulnerable” to malware threats that could burgeon in the event of a conflict.  Concerns held by FBI director Christopher Wray were cited (unsurprising – Pezzullo habitually fawns before the US national security state): “that there is malware implanted in both US and allied networks, which is specifically designed to be activated in the lead up to or in the at the outset of a conflict.”

Dusted off, this Manchurian candidate vision of the world, with its hibernating potency, has been repurposed as a threat against the critical infrastructure.  “Director Wray has talked about the low blows that would be visited on the population at large … taking down hospitals, electricity grids, and the like.”

Close attention should be paid to the disfiguring way Pezzullo uses history.  When he was Canberra’s most powerful (un)civil servant, he liberally offered gobbets of historical readings that were hopelessly out of context.  Pezzulo has that charming sub-literate Wikipedia knowledge of the world that makes him tolerable in the company of other sub-literates.  As Home Secretary, he was not shy in spouting febrile nonsense about such topics as, “The prospect of Great Power War” that he claimed would “approach, but not reach, a level of probability”, or the use of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons by actors that were not “readily identifiable”.

Such views were expressed an address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2019, alongside those fears that have become boringly recycled for endless consumption: “the deliberate subversion of our democratic institutions and our social cohesion”; “the world’s ungoverned and dangerous territories”; “radical extremist Islamist terrorism”; and “transnational, serious and organised crime” of the “globalised” variety.

His 2021 ANZAC Day address made no secret of his lust for conflict, masquerading, as ever, under the cover of peaceful intentions.  “Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war”.  The speech was notable for mangling the legacies of two US generals: Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Fascinatingly enough, Pezzullo omits mentioning the sacking of MacArthur by President Henry S. Truman for exceeding his brief in wishing to bomb China during the Korean War, with atomic weapons, if need be.

As long as Sinophobic nonsense growls and barks in Canberra, most of it under the close, cultivating eyes of US-funded think tanks, political converts to empire and the Pentagon itself, this demagogic eunuch will have an audience.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

The Summer of Student Activist Protests

BY RALPH NADER

 MAY 7, 2024
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Image by Hany Osman.

At many college campuses, students are protesting in opposition to the Biden Administration’s unconditional backing, with weapons and diplomatic cover, of Netanyahu’s continuing serial war crimes slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, most of them children and women. Hundreds of faculty members are defending these valiant youngsters and criticizing excessively harsh crackdowns by failed University presidents who are calling in outside police.

With graduations approaching, pro-Netanyahu lobbies and cowed University heads (like Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who makes a salary of over $2,000 an hour) expect the students to disperse from campus for the summer and end their demonstrations.

The Israeli genocidal crimes against Gazans will continue and intensify if Israel invades Rafah. Millions of refugees will suffer. What will become of the organized student calls for a permanent ceasefire, greatly increased humanitarian aid and cessation of U.S. weapons shipments? The students who leave their campus protests can and should focus on members of Congress in their Districts and in Washington.

In two weeks, hundreds of Congressional summer student interns will begin arriving to work in Congressional offices. Congress is the decades-long reservoir for Israeli colonial aggression. Moreover, Congress, under AIPAC’s extraordinary pressure, has blocked testimony by prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates since 1948. Not once have any of these peace advocates, many of whom are Israeli retired cabinet ministers, mayors, security and military leaders been invited to a Congressional Committee Hearing.

This power center for the U.S. Empire – Capitol Hill – presents serious students with an opportunity to educate their elders. Such an opportunity materialized during the Vietnam War when Congressional interns in the late 1960s organized a highly visible petition drive and engaged in peaceful protests.

Back in the Congressional Districts, the access is easier and available to many more students and faculty. Because Congress is in “recess” for much of the summer – Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and the entire month of August to Labor Day – students and citizens can demand public meetings preceded by formal summons to Senators and Representatives. (See my column “Sending Citizens Summons to Members of Congress”).

Five hundred to a thousand clearly legible signatures with the individuals’ occupations and emails should get these politicians to your well-prepared community meetings.

There would be no more notorious incommunicado behavior, laced with robo-letters to inquiring constituents. Instead, there would be person-to-person questioning, dialogue, and responses where evasions and sweet talk will be more difficult for the lawmakers to utilize.

The subject matter of these public meetings can extend beyond ghastly scenes of dead, dying, sick, and starving families in Gaza to Biden’s foreign and military policies. Our government is fueling an Empire producing disasters that are conducted in the name of the powerless American people, whose sovereign powers under our Constitution are delegated to Congress and the Executive Branch. The abuse of this power starts with Congress.

Nothing can compare to face-to-face meetings with the lawmakers. Letters, phone calls, and emails rarely can be relied on to reach them directly – that is if you are not a big campaign contributor. Besides, unlike in the past, today’s legislative staffers are much more likely to ignore these missives without even an acknowledgment. (See The Incommunicados report: https://incommunicadoswatch.org/).

A people’s town meeting has an agenda set by the people. Some suggestions follow:

1. There have been no Congressional hearings since before October 7th on the overall policies in the Middle East pursued by the White House and Congress. The House and Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees have not been active. Instead, there have been show hearings berating University presidents to stifle free speech on their campuses and answer hypothetical questions about anti-semitism against Jews but not the other ongoing Congressionally weaponized anti-semitism against Gazan Arabs, who are Semites, being annihilated in that tiny enclave. Disgraceful! Demand public hearings for the citizenry.

2. Make U.S. engagements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a major electoral campaign issue for November. This is a major opportunity to get the direct attention of the 535 lawmakers and to push them to stop kicking the can down the road. The decades-long control of Congress by the “Israeli-government-can-do-no-wrong lobby” must end. There is too much massive, preventable suffering being ignored in the Middle East, too much danger of wider regional wars involving the super-powers, and too much damage to civil liberties and democratic processes in our own country to avoid these matters any longer.

3. The students and teachers will find allies in their Congressional Districts from long-time advocates like the American Friends Committee (Quakers), the Unitarians, united Jewish, Christian, and Muslim peace groups, the increasing numbers of outspoken labor union leaders, and just plain Americans fed up with the costly U.S. Empire and its military-industrial complex (remember President Eisenhower’s warnings).

People want their tax dollars returned to the crucial public necessities back home. They don’t like big business controlling Congress and getting away with looting Uncle Sam by their out-of-control greed and power. Over 70% of Americans believe these big companies have too much control over their lives including many liberal and conservative families.

Larger reforms, redirections, and horizons of society often start with one compelling abuse or outrageous travesty of justice. This has occurred in the labor, farmer, consumer, environmental, and civil rights movements throughout our history.

There will be high-visibility protests outside the National Democratic Party Convention in Chicago and probable demonstrations at the National Republican Party Convention in Milwaukee this summer. But the laser-focused citizen pressure should be on those 535 members of YOUR Congress, their local offices, and their staff.

Change Congress and you change America! That is leverage!

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!