Baja California; María listened to the radio, 10 minutes to 10 at night, she immediately fell asleep. The anesthesia It took effect as her uterus tore and the blood did not stop. She woke up the next day. She learned that they removed the tube and did a clandestine curettage in it Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). He doctor It saved his life at the risk of losing his license. The above happened 40 years ago in Mexicali, where bad practices, the demonization and criminalization of abortion, the stigma, fear and anxiety, led me to a gynecologist who illegally performed abortions in the city. She placed a catheter and sent the women to her houses; some did not return the next day. Did they die? Namely, I, for one, saved my life and years later I learned that The gynecologist was arrested.
You might think that these stories remained in the past, because today Legal Interruption of Pregnancy (ILE) is allowed in Baja California until 12.6 weeks, since it was approved in Congress on September 29, 2021 and came into force on November 13 of that year. However, nowadays, the risks are different, it is no longer the knife, the scissors, the probe, the glass, the liters and liters of rue tea that intoxicate the woman and endanger her life. Now the narrative is different.
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There are stigmas about abortion, myths that you will become sterile
Angelica Medina
Perla Nallely Martínez, member of the collective The Borders of Mexicali, who has many years fighting for the fulfillment of the Women rights to choose about her body, gives us a feeling about reality: “I would like to contribute to a change of narrative, beyond the risks. The media are a bit alarmist, they focus on risk, death, figures that scare us. I would rather talk about accessibility, since the right to abortion is there.”
More specifically, Angélica Medina, from the collective The Sentinelssays that the risk “is the bad information about the medication” that is ingested for the process of Legal Interruption of Pregnancy (ILE). The combination of lack of affordability, lack of information, omission of the state in health campaigns and incorrect intake of the medication leads to a series of problems and pregnant women are the ones who suffer the consequences.
The above, Angélica details, is a product of the bad practice of some doctors who they profit from the medicinethat do not apply the correct protocol or, even, there are health companies raising pricesAlthough they provide the service with hygiene, they make it poorly accessible.
In Baja California are one million 868 thousand 431 womenand of reproductive age, one million 65. For all women, there are six care centers in the state for ILEThere are few places for so many people, says Perla Martínez Reynoso. And he is right. This insufficiency means that the collectives are the ones who “resolve” and who, for the most part, provide support at home for the process of discontinuation with medication. Hence the disparity in real figures regarding the number of legal abortions performed. For example, Livier Ramírez, leader and person in charge of Safe Abortion Program in Mexicali, mentions that from January to October of this year, 430 abortions have been performed. The average he manages, he reports, is 50 per month. She clarifies that although the law was approved in September 2021 and came into force in November, it was not until March 16, 2022 that the program was installed at the Industrial Health Clinic and since then she has coordinated it.
The Health Secretary of the state, through information cards, provided the following data: from 2021 to 2023 there have been 988 interruptions, but its data is peculiar, for example, in 2021 it indicates that there were only 20, of which 12 were in Mexicali12 in Tijuana and 6 in Cove. “In 2022 there were 292 interruptions, of which 170 were in Mexicali81 Tijuana41 Cove. So far in 2023, there have been 676 legal pregnancy terminations: 414 in Mexicali, 202 in Tijuana and 60 in Ensenada. “At the Secretary of Health, requests are being attended to without distinction of eligibility,” mentions the information card provided for this report.
However, Perla Martínez, from the Borders collective, says that they serve an average of 100 women a month, giving orientation, canalization and application of the procedure. While Angélica, from the collective Las Centinelas, reveals that the Accompaniment Network, where the state collectives converge, have had, since the legalizationin September 2021, 2,500 processes concluded “at home”, that is, the women did not go to the clinic and they felt more comfortable and confident doing it at home with support.
The state of Baja California has seven municipalities, of these sOnly Tijuana has two health centers where the ILE is carried outthere is one in Rosaritoone in Cove and two in Mexicali. One more year after the decriminalization of abortion, in the Mexicali Valley (agricultural area), a center was inaugurated in the ejido Guadalupe Victoria City or ejido 43. This joined that of the Industrial colony. The person in charge of the Safe Abortion Program, Livier Ramírez, explains that to make the procedure more affordable, since the people of the valley do not have all the conditions to move to the city of Mexicali, the creation of said clinic was promoted in Guadalupe Victoria City, service meeting center to which people from the various ejidos come.
The women who come with the Las Borders or Red de Acompañamiento collectives are mostly students, many of them work. He explains that when they go to the center they are only seen from eight to four in the afternoon and they have to have an ultrasound: “not everyone can afford an ultrasound, they have to stop going to the school or to job, those are the barriers that make it inaccessible.” The ILE must be affordable, holdsand for this you only need willpower policy of those who direct the government institutions, but since we have a Secretary of Health who in the first year of application of the law, when giving the figures of the procedures applied, boasted that “we dissuaded about 50”, well, that is difficult. “As an official he must leave his beliefs aside, he is fine, it is your human right, but you should not interfere and even less say it with pride, because he does not know what those women are going through.”
Angélica Medina, from the group Las Centinelas, talks about cultural blockages, about the 30 years of conservative governments in the state (the National Action Party governed from 1989 to 2019). “I reduce this resistance that exists among some public servants to cultural, moral and misinformation issues.” And he adds: “but the entire country is conservative, not only Baja California, that is revealed in all the national meetings we have.” There is still a lot of misinformation, there are also stigmas, myths that when you have an abortion you will bleed, that you will die, that you will become sterile.
At the Industrial health clinic, Dr. Livier Ramírez has faced resistance, but with “awareness and training” they have managed to overcome that barrier. Abortion, she says, is a taboo topic among many of her colleagues, her belief system conflicts and they have tried to train and sensitize them. She clarifies that so far no doctor, nurse, or psychologist has invoked conscientious objection, which is allowed by rule 046: “At the moment no one has invoked it in our clinic, because the instruction they were given: if your belief system is great, I understand it, I respect it, but send them with me. Fortunately, I have found cases of colleagues who are very believers in their religious ideas and fortunately they are one of those who send me the most patients”.
In the Industrial clinic, in Mexicalithe requirements that are requested for a ILE They’re a identification and an ultrasound for see pregnancy status, in some cases the latter is omitted, says Dr. Ramírez. If the patient is ready, they give her the medication. “There are two days of intake, we start with a pill to lower hormones and subsequently, the expulsion begins. After 10 days they must return to see their status. The least are those who do not return,” he explains. It applies the misoprostol pill. The clinic does not apply the combination of misoprostol and misiprostone. One of the concerns is to provide quality care, which is why there is a psychology service. It is not mandatory for the patient, but they are always asked to talk, especially in cases linked to violence, not in decision-making. The girls are very sure of their decision.” When surgery is required, it is referred to the Maternal and Child Hospital.
Dr. Ramírez herself comments that cases with old practices which include the use of hooks, knives, bottles, probes, have not been presented. Now what exists is bad information as for the medicine. And it is the groups that have reported that the doctors have “sold medication that is not the one they should use. Or they give them the wrong instructions, they do not ask them about their situation and that must be considered before think about an abortionthey do not apply the correct protocol”.
The theme of abortion has been opened but that has led to companies emerging from the health who see it as a businessor there are cases of usurpation of groups that are actually anti-abortion groups.
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The groups point out that the information must be universalsince the practice of ILE It is for all sectors. The lack of information is what leads to cases like the one they narrate: “We received a girl who told us that she went to a doctor who told her that she had remains in her body. The girl needed a post-abortion check-up, but the doctor scared her and told her that she had remains of her and needed to do a test. curettage for which he would charge 20 thousand pesos. Luckily the girl didn’t have a heartbeat, she went with a friend who turned out to be her companion and told her not to perform the curettage, that it would be better to go to the health clinic IndustrialThere they checked it and saw that it had absolutely no remains. She was perfect.” The activist clarifies that this is one of the few cases where they were given more explanations because, in general, the women do not want to talk about their experience but rather solve their problem: “Then we have risks, from the existence of anti-rights doctors, people who name themselves feminists and give bad information, even those who want to profit,” says Angélica.
It is the collectives that spread information through common means, social networks, spectacular, spots, flyers, talks, but, sometimes, they face right-wing business groups that stop them. For example, when Las Centinelas hired the services of a company to place a billboard in a busy area. The contract was for one month, but on the second day the company spoke to them to cancel the work on the grounds that they were receiving a lot of pressure and that they were accusing them of advocating crime: “we explained to them that abortion was not a crime and The most we could achieve was for the spectacular to stay for 15 days,” but the issue went viral and, finally, the collective achieved its goal: inform.