The System of Getting Abortion Pills to Women is Growing

 

The New Yorker has a great article this week from inside the clandestine business of getting abortion pills to women who need them in anti-abortion states. It begins with a young pregnant Texas woman who already has three young children. Her husband is so abusive she fears for her safety. She is more afraid of him than she is of the law. She is trying to hide enough money to leave him. She meets another woman in a seldom-used park. The pills go from one purse into another, the women part and disappear quickly. The pills came into Texas from Mexico.

So far as I know, there have been no convictions of those who assist women who get abortions. Surely there will be some. The laws are there as a bluff of potential conviction and, of course, influence the thinking of some who provide abortions.

But, there is another group that calls such bluffs. It is people who don't believe they will be caught and/or don't care that much if they are. Before Roe there were hundreds or maybe thousands of such people, mostly women. I've written before about the Jane Group in Chicago who performed thousands of abortions and were widely known among doctors in the City. 

 The New Yorker trail begins with Mexican women who made abortions available for decades before it was made legal a few years ago. They had developed a system of vetting women who would participate in an illegal network that provided many thousands of abortions. It was the wide availability of abortion while illegal that persuaded Mexican courts to rule it a right. That is what happened in Ireland and Chile. 

There are lots of retired U.S. citizens in Mexico. These include women who are well educated and experienced in politics, government, law enforcement and fund raising. When these U. S. women became acquainted with women in Mexico who had successful made abortion widely available while it was illegal, things began to happen. As the Mexican woman who leads the effort said, "Abortions can happen in the U.S. or Mexico without leaving a trail."

Thousands of pills are purchased each month in Mexico with money from the U.S. Calls come to Mexico from the U.S. and arrangements are made. Grey haired U. S. women walk them across the border. Once across, the pills are mailed individually to young women who made contact with the call-in centers in Mexico. Each woman operates independently of the others--often knows no other women doing this work.   

Once in a while, a woman gets the pills and decides to work in the clandestine operation. This makes me think it will become so large the politics in anti-abortion states will change.