TIJUANA, Mexico — Just over a decade ago, when Crystal Pérez Lira needed an abortion, she had to leave Mexico. The procedure was illegal in her home state of Baja California and so deeply stigmatized that even Pérez Lira supported the procedure only for those who were raped. Until she unexpectedly got pregnant.
She traveled to the U.S. for help, walking alone across the border from Tijuana to San Diego, first for a health check and a compulsory ultrasound, and then back for a second appointment, when she was given pills to induce an abortion. She returned to Mexico, where she went through the procedure at a friend’s house.
Today, the cross-border help moves in the opposite direction. Pérez Lira is part of a network of activists across Mexico who provide advice, emotional support, and free medications to those seeking abortion — including, increasingly, people living in U.S. states where abortion is sharply restricted. These volunteer groups, known as “companion networks,” have been quietly sending abortion pills across the border, often to vulnerable people who lack funds or immigration papers, and training volunteers in the U.S. to establish their own companion networks.
These activists operate outside the health care system, working to create abortion access even in places where doctors face prosecution for assisting with the procedure.
“They’re being very underground,” Pérez Lira said, explaining that she couldn’t put a STAT reporter in touch with the U.S.-based networks. “It’s very, very secretive.”
Bloodys Red Tijuana, the group Pérez Lira founded in 2016, a few years after her own abortion, received its first request for abortion pills from someone in the U.S. in the summer of 2019. Three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision eliminated constitutional protections for abortion, just as Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized the procedure.
Over the past two years, Pérez Lira said, the group has supported around 60 people living north of the border, distributing not just pills but also information on how to safely manage an abortion. “We’re migrating the way we’re working,” she said. “We’re migrating that mission into the U.S.”
You must log in or register to comment.