Direct action abortion services in Latin America
This week, we’re sharing audio from the presentation “Direct action abortion services in Latin America” 2023 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville, NC.
Thanks to the volunteers who re-recorded the presenter and audience questions where permission to share their voices was not granted and a transcription. Keep an eye out in August for our youtube video to include the slides from the actual presentation this recording was made from. Audios from the 2024 ACABookfair will be online in the near future on the bookfairs website, https://acabookfair.noblogs.org/
Transcription
Anonymous: All right, hi everyone. Thanks for being here. It’s really awesome to be able to talk at this book fair. I’m not going to say my name because I’m going to take a few security measures, because I’m going to be talking about some pretty sensitive things. So I know it may seem weird to be on a stage talking to a microphone about sensitive things, but there’s some measures I’m gonna take to keep myself safe and the people that I work with safe. One of them is I’m not going to name any real names. This is a fake name, you know? I’m not going to name any very identifying things, I’m not really going to talk about where I’m from. Also, I’m gonna open up the space for Q & A. I’m gonna ask that if you ask questions, you don’t ask me very specific things about, like, where I work, what I do, or who would I do it with? And if you do, that’s okay I’m just gonna probably not answer you. *laughs*, like, I’ll politely not answer you.
I’m going to take these measures, because — we’re anarchists and we always do this sort of thing — but also I’m going to talk about things that are criminalizeable activities for me and the people that I work with and I really need to be careful. At the same time, I think that this is really important information to be shared, and I think that I have things that could be really interesting and useful for folks in this region.
So, I work with a collective in Central America, and we are a Central American direct action abortion service, and this is from a manifesto that we wrote. This is just a little snippet of it, there’s a lot more to it but I just wanted to read it because I feel like it kind of gives a context. “We are positioned politically from diverse feminism’s — ” this is a translation from Spanish so there may be some terminology in here that doesn’t quite sound like it would in English, if it had been written in English, but it’s translated from Spanish:
“We are positioned politically from diverse feminism’s and networks of care, of affection and of collective holding. We consider ourselves part of a territory of lakes, volcanoes, mountains, rivers and oceans that are part of Central America. The center, Abya Yala, the region forgotten by many and suffered by millions. The center that barely survives, that holds on despite state violence, organized crime, the maras and drug trafficking, building diverse resistances and forms of autonomy. This is why we do what we do. We believe we deserve a kind, compassionate, respectful, dignified and irreverent life. We deserve territories and geographies that are grateful for our existence, and the care of our spiritual, energetic psychological and physical well being”.
That’s just to give a quick introduction. This collective has been functioning for around four years now. It’s completely grassroots. We do take a lot of measures to take care of yourselves because as I said previously, this is criminalizable activity and it always has been. That’s really important in this context, because right now, what’s happening in the US is that since Roe v Wade got overturned, and even before that, there was a lot of work happening in this country around abortion access and different subjects related to that. But always within a context where , it was a legal activity, , maybe inaccessible and classist and lots of different barriers, but it was not an illegal activity. I’m working from a context where it has always been illegal, and it has always been a basis for me to land a long time in jail. These are things that we have to really keep in consideration.
So yeah, the security is critical for the sustainability of this work. But it’s also an interesting way of questioning how important protagonism is in activism. I think that for myself and the people that I work with, it’s been really interesting. Like, we’re doing all of this work that we’re doing because we care, and we believe in it and also because we’re proud of it. It sometimes makes you really have to question “How much of what I do and how much of my activism is also because I’m doing it in a performative way sometimes?” These are things that come up in our conversations, we’re like, we can’t let people really know that we’re doing this in our context. This is just something I wanted to share.
Why did I want to present? Well, as I said, Roe v. Wade got overturned recently and the context all of a sudden feels the political climate in the US is going backwards, or becoming even more fascist and even more restrictive. In Latin America — the Americas are this huge landmass where the United States is up here *points up high* , but it’s connected to *points all around below it* all of this other region that is Latin America — things are actually getting better. Things have been so fucking bad, that there’s no way…they can’t go anywhere but better really. Right now we’re living in this very specific moment where the struggle not only for legal abortion, but also for a bunch of other rights for women, for people who can get pregnant, is actually advancing in a really incredible way.
I felt it was important in a way to kind of share this, share that there are victories happening right now and share that there is this super incredible vibrant, strong movement happening very nearby. I know it’s a massive region, but very close by there’s a lot of victories happening. Also, maybe we have some things to share with y’all, this kind of narrative that the global north — and the United States specifically — is where the most *happening* things are happening. We need to break with that narrative, because actually in Latin America, because we have lived in contexts of such oppression and such lack of basic human rights, we’ve actually developed and innovated in really cool ways that y’all could maybe use. I’m excited to share some stuff with you, and maybe if you already know this stuff, it might be because we did it first *laughs* in Latin America and then we showed some of y’all. So that’s really cool for me to share.
I’m gonna give you a little context about what’s happening in this big ass landmass that’s south of this region. So what you’re looking at is the legal status of abortion. The green is where abortion is decriminalized or legal. But let me tell you three years ago, that map would have almost all been yellow, because yellow is where it’s prohibited. And then red is where it’s prohibited in all cases. So the yellow is prohibited, but if the person who’s pregnants life is at risk you can get a therapeutic abortion, or if it was because of a rape, you can get an abortion, or other reasons why you could get one. Let me just say, just because you could get one doesn’t mean you’re gonna be able to. Having these exceptions does not mean that the someone whose life is at risk can actually get that done, because there’s a million and one obstacles. Usually even if you do try to get a therapeutic abortion, you’re not gonna be able to get one.
So yeah, check out Central America, which is the region I’m from, there’s a lot of red up there. That means it doesn’t matter what context, it doesn’t matter if the woman’s going to die. Literally it’s just “just die, we’d rather you die than have an abortion” which is fucking mind blowing, right?
Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, those are three victories that just happened in the past three years. It’s because of this incredible movement that’s happening. And those are huge victories, those are victories that came from years of organizing and pressure, and also failing. There was an attempt of getting abortion legalized in 2018 that was rejected. And then in 2020 it was finally made legal. In Mexico it became legal in 2021 and then Colombia became legal last year [2022]. And those are usually up to 12-14 weeks, or 24 weeks in the case of Colombia.
For example, for my group, Colombia is this place where it’s like “if everything else fails here, we’re gonna send these people to Colombia because that’s where you can do it up to 24 weeks”. So imagine, it really informs our work living in this region.
And what does this mean? I mean, it’s not like people are not going to abort, they have to abort, people just have to. So what does that mean? That means that all over this region, there are decentralized grassroots feminist organizations and groups that are offering abortion services. There’s also a lot of people that are taking advantage of the situation, selling bad medication, not giving good information.
I’ve heard all sorts of really sketchy stories about how people who are in desperate contexts get access to these medications and that’s kind of where my group arose. I started meeting people in different parts of my country or in different events and different feminist organizations, and I started realizing, like, wow, we’re all doing this work but in very isolated ways. And usually it means that we’ll go to Mexico and we’ll bring back as many pills as we can without feeling like we’re gonna get caught. And when I say pills I’m talking about misoprostol and *hesitates and thinks for a second, says in Spanish* mifepristona [mifepristone]…I don’t even know how to say it in English. The other one *laughs*, mife, yeah.
So these are the pills that we’re bringing back — either from Mexico where it will go to different places — and we’ll distribute them. But again, it’s very isolated, we’re not really offering any companionship during the process. It really is just a very “Okay, I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who needs this, and I’ll sell it to them, or I’ll give it to them”. We all started kind of connecting the fact that we were all doing this, and we’re like, “Okay, well, let’s just do it together and better”. So that’s how we started working together.
The reason why this map is so yellow is also because there’s this huge connection between the church and state in many of these countries. And in some of these countries there is no division between church and state, right? They are one in the same. It‘s incredible. There is a lot of religious presence in society and the culture overall. But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t trying to abort. They’re trying to abort every day, all the time, in all regions, no matter how religious that region is.
And as I said, again, even in these places where it’s become legal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accessible, right? I was reading about some different groups in Mexico, for example, Mexico is one of the places where it’s been legal in certain states for the longest amount of time. So it’s usually this reference, but really it’s still very expensive, it’s still very inaccessible, and it’s still difficult to get it done. We decided that we not only wanted to create access, we wanted to do it even better *laughs*, we wanted to create care. We wanted to accompany these people, pre, during and post the process. We wanted to make them feel held and taken care of. And also wanted to do it in a way that didn’t risk our security and our ability to continue doing this.
I’m gonna first go into two case studies of collectives that have been organizing for at least a decade before I talk about the group that I’m in and how we do what we do. The first one is Las Libres and this is a group that was started in 2001 in Guanajuato, in Mexico. I found this article off of Time [magazine] which was like, cool. This is kind of like what I was trying to say, when Roe v. Wade got overturned they already had a whole infrastructure set up. They have decades of experience getting medications to people, accompanying during the process, doing education in different communities. Also working with legislators pushing on a legal side. This is Verónica Cruz, she’s the founder of this group, and this group has done really amazing work, like I said, for decades.
When Roe v Wade got overturned Verónica Cruz instantly it was here in the United States, helping activists and organizers like “It’s all good, we got this.” This sucks, it really does suck. I’m not trying to say it’s all good that Roe v Wade got overturned, but also it’s not the end of the world. I witnessed on social media, a lot of panic and I was “Damn, this is horrible” and also I’m like *whispers*, “It’s okay. We’re always gonna make this work”.
And then this is from Argentina, this is the Socorristas en Red — this is a photo from their 2012 gathering, that’s why it’s so blurry — another group that is all over Argentina. Which, Argentina is a massive country, and they’ve been accompanying people, again, for decades. It was really awesome because when my group got started they helped us figure some stuff out. We did some different Zooms, and they trained us a little bit.
Then we also realized “Oh, wait, the context in Argentina is similar, but also different, because abortion is not a criminalized activity in Argentina and it is where I live”. So we were able to replicate some of their strategies and at the same time, we had to invent our own strategies, because we had to be extra careful and extra secure. For example, they can post fliers and put numbers on those flyers and be like “Contact us”. We can’t do that, it’s just too big of a risk.
Those are two groups that have existed for decades. There’s lots of other groups, this sort of grassroots organizing is happening all over Latin America and it has been for decades. Women on Web, maybe some of y’all have heard of them. They’re an international organization, they offer a lot of support to different grassroots groups, be it getting the medications to them, be it referencing. They have a website and people will write from all over the world and they’ll help connect those people to more grassroots local groups in their area. That’s a really good way to make sure people are getting the care they need. Because for example, Women on Web will send home abortion pills to people, but if you’re doing international shipping, those can be used up to 12 weeks and a lot of times they won’t get there in time. Or it’ll get lost in the mail. Or what started happening, at least in the country where I live, is that the customs started realizing what’s going on and grabbing the packages. But still, a great resource.
I have a few videos I want to share to y’all, but I want to tell you quickly about how our group works. I’m not going to go into too much detail but this is to give you some ideas about how this could work, even here in North Carolina, for example. Again, as I said, we have a lot of security measures, so those are security measures that I hope y’all will never have to use here, and also you might.
First of all, we are accessible, pay it forward. We do ask for a contribution, but we make sure it’s a sliding contribution and all of the money that people pay is used to buy more medication. This is how we make it work, anytime anyone says that they can’t pay it we’re like “That’s fine. You don’t have to pay it”. If someone says that they don’t have money for an ultrasound, we’ll be like, “It’s all good. We’re gonna send you the money”.
How do we do these transactions? I don’t know if this exists here but where I live, someone, through a bank app, can send money to an ATM, and then the other person, using a code, can go and take it out without having any sort of bank account information. I don’t know if that exists here. Hopefully it does. It’s really useful for this sort of thing. But this is the system that we use personally. Because our baseline is we don’t have contact with the people ever. Like direct contact, in person contact, never. They will never know who we are. They will never know our name or where we live or anything. That is also part of how we organize, we’re completely decentralized. We’re in different regions of the country. And we work in subgroups so that no one is in charge of all the parts of the process.
There’s some of us that check the email — we use an encrypted email to get in the initial communications — the medications are in several different places but they’re not ever with the people who do the email. The people who then receive the money or take out the money are other people. The people who send pills to the person or other people. The people who do the accompaniment — I’m trying to figure out what the right word is. ‘ve heard of the word “doula” used here, but we’re not really doulas. We’ve received some amount of training but we’re not doulas. We call it “acompañantes”, we’re companions to the process — the people who are doing that are doing that separately.
We all have our own little jobs, and we’re all connected through different Signal groups, but one person does not do the email and have the pills at their house, ever. Or one person does not do the companionship and have the pills. We just really tried to compartmentalize. And then each person in their own little subgroup will have different security measures that they take to keep themselves safe.
I mean, obviously, we use encrypted email, we use different messaging apps that are very secure. We always use cell phones that are only for that, we don’t ever use our personal cell phones for anything. We do use our personal cell phones for communication amongst yourselves, but any contact with the people that we are offering services to happens on a different secure cell phone that is only for that. I don’t know if you can do that here in the US, but there’s ways to buy SIM cards in Central America that are not at all connected to someone’s personal identity. Can you do that here? *a few people nod their heads in the crowd* Yeah? Cool. Sweet. Yeah. So that’s something that we always do. And then every two or three months, we’re switching out those SIM cards.
We use services such as Lyft to deliver the pills. The person has to ask for a Lyft and then we’ll send a package in that lift. They never know our location. We’ll go somewhere that isn’t our home, like five minutes before the delivery is supposed to happen, we’ll be like “I’m here. You for it. Because if you ask for it from our account, it’ll be connected to our identities.”
So they ask for it, we deliver it to the [Lyft] person — obviously we give them a package that doesn’t look like pills — and then it’s taken to that person. So that person receives it.
Someone from the audience: You give it to the driver?
A: Yeah. Yes, we do give it to the driver. We don’t tell him what it is, this is very common where I live. I don’t know if it’s common here, but packages are frequently delivered this way. I’m sure there’s another version of some sort of messenger service that can be used, but Lyft is something that everyone uses and people usually know how to use. Like I said, these are relevant to my context but I feel like they can all be made relevant to this context in some way.
Okay, we require ultrasounds for all cases. We will pay for people’s ultrasounds if they don’t have the money to pay for them, because they’re quite expensive. But we make sure that we get an ultrasound from everyone. First of all, to see the number of weeks, because we only accompany up to 12 weeks. There’s protocols to accompany up to 24 weeks, but we do not feel comfortable because of the risk. The risk is much more elevated after 12 weeks and someone has to go to the hospital, which is possible under 12 weeks as well, but we just try to avoid cases where we think the person might have to go to the hospital because then it becomes a bigger risk for us.
Also because we’re not well trained in those protocols and there are other people who are, so we will sometimes refer people to other groups who are better trained to accompany after the 12 weeks. The person has to be at least six weeks pregnant as well for the medication to work. So between 6 and 12 weeks are the weeks that we accompany. Also to make sure it’s not an ectopic pregnancy, which means that it’s happening outside of the uterus. So this is why we just want to make sure that the people are safe.
Also, when we begin the communications through the encrypted email, we send a big general email with a lot of different safety measures. So we’ll be like “Make sure your partner, your family does not have access to your phone” because we’ve had cases where the boyfriend finds out and then threatens to take legal action against the person. Or the family finds out and they want to stop the person and then that might become a legal issue for us. If we get taken to the cops that’s a big problem for us.
We’ll also let them know “Hey, this is more or less how the process works, we’re gonna send you these medications. This is how they work. Here’s how you can get prepared.” We’ll tell them different things that they can get, a hot water bottle, or medication for nausea, and that sort of thing.
And then we keep ourselves safe. We’re just we’re pretty private about it. We’re not really telling a ton of people. Definitely it’s not on our social media. A lot of times we’ll ask people how they got our email and we’ll try to, at least more or less, make sure that there’s some amount of connection. Obviously this isn’t perfect. There’s people who write to us that no one knows their references. We’ll maybe ask a few questions, and if it feels like it’s okay, we’ll go for it.
It’s not a perfect system, obviously, but we just try to make it so it’s not super easy for anyone to write us and to be able to say whatever. We do have some amount of filter. We do change the email every so often. We’ll let different people know, who we know are big references. We have friends who work in social services, we have friends who work with different organizations that they’re referencing a lot of people, so we’ll let them know “Hey, we changed our email”. We’ll also check the old emails, and if we get an old email, we’ll redirect them to our new email.
And then we do a lot of emotional self care ourselves. This is a really big part of this work, burnout is so real. When you’re dealing with a bunch of tense, desperate, anxious people all the time — and because of their anxiety they’re usually making things harder for us, not because they’re trying to but because they’re actually so stressed out — we make sure that everyone feels okay about taking the breaks that they need. Most people in the group will take months off at a time and then come back. We’ll do a lot of taking turns in a way.
We do some regular meetings where we’ll do emotional check-ins, and we’ll ask “How are you feeling?” And if someone says, “I’m just stressed in life and I’m overwhelmed” we’ll be like, “Hey, why don’t you take at least one week or a few months off?” And that’s how we sustain this work. It’s super important.
I’m going to share the protocols that we use around these pills. There’s different protocols, there’s different ways that people take them. We tell people to never do them intravaginally. These pills can either be taken sublingually or intravaginally and we don’t ever recommend intravaginal because there’s residue that can be leftover and that can be a way, like if someone has to go to hospital, they [medical staff] can find that residue [and know you’ve attempted an abortion]. But if it’s sublingual, that residue is not there.
With misoprostol it’s pretty much four pills sublingually, three times with a three hour spacing. That’s if it’s only misoprostol. Misoprostol, basically — I know maybe a lot of y’all already know this, but just in case — is a medication used for gastrointestinal ulcers, but that also generates uterine contractions. And then for the mifepristone, that one actually cuts the flow of progesterone, which is necessary for pregnancy to continue.
We got really excited when we started being able to use this medication because this medication is usually not accessible to people in Latin America. Almost all of the whole abortions that are happening are with misoprostol. But we’ve had it not work several times. It’s like, I’m just making this number up, but an 85% success. And when you’re dealing with these situations, you just really want it to work. You don’t want someone to have to go through this twice. So with mife it’s one dose the first day, and then the second day, you can take four pills of misoprostol, which is enough to just generate the uterine contractions to release.
That’s what we do. It’s super effective. I’m not gonna say it’s not painful, and it’s not messy. We’ve definitely accompanied people who’ve gone through some really, really rough processes, but it’s very effective and the person can do it in their home with their loved ones. We’re talking with them through Signal, we’re giving them the instructions. We’re giving them emotional support. We’re giving them tips. And then also if it ever happens that someone is bleeding way too much, we’ll be like “Go to the hospital and tell them you had a spontaneous miscarriage”. That’s kind of how we cover ourselves because we really do want people to go to hospital if they need to go to the hospital, we don’t want them to be bleeding out at home.
We’re also getting support from local international groups. We’ve been receiving trainings on not only these protocols and different ways of accompanying people from other international groups, we’re also getting security training and digital security trainings, that sort of thing. There’s local groups that will help us receive money, for example. Like if we get some money from different grants or that sort of thing, we don’t want that group to deposit money into one of our bank accounts. We don’t want there to be anything of any of us connected to this money, so other groups will receive our money, that sort of thing. We’re pretty much trying to be untraceable, on paper. No trace. Which, there’s always things that we can work on, we’re always finding ways that we need to improve, but this is the process that we’ve developed.
I wanted to talk about how all of this connects to other movements that are happening in Latin America and one of the biggest movements right now, one of the most vibrant movements right now is the movement for legal abortion, right? So what’s amazing about this is that a lot of the people who are doing these grassroots, decentralized, service groups are also within the massive movement for legal abortion in Latin America. And then that’s connecting to a bunch of other situations that have to do with gender, you know, gendered violence is a huge problem. Femicides are a huge problem.
So I have some videos I wanted to show you all real quick. I am going to try to interpret one of them. All right, let’s see if I can keep up:
“A new wave of feminist movement is going through Latin America from north to south. The women are taking to the streets to demand advances in the fight against misogynist violence and for legal abortion such as in Argentina last week, a wave of green bandanas as a symbol of the movement for legal abortion took the streets of Buenos Aires. With the new entry of the government of Alberto Fernandez, the feminists are hoping that legalization of abortion up to 14 weeks will become a reality this year.
This is a shared struggle with other feminist movements in the whole continent. In 2018, we realized that this was a struggle that was not just Argentina. This was an international struggle about all of Latin America. There was a need to expose and globalize and internationalize the plurinationalist of this right, and the green bandana was the symbol of the struggle. The cooperation between feminist groups of different countries are creating a new dimension of this phenomenon. The collective from Chile, Las Tesis, participated in the march last week in Buenos Aires.
Their song ‘A Rapist in Your Path’ has become in a feminist anthem— *issue with translating some of the subtitles* — such as in Mexico, where the number of femicides does not stop growing. Last year, there were more than 1,000 cases registered, which is a 10% growth compared to 2018. The feminist groups are demanding government actions from the government of Andres Manuel.”
Okay, I’m gonna stop it there, but that was just kind of to show you that pretty much this has become a movement that is not just about Argentina or different countries, this has become a very internationalized movement that has made it so feminists are working together across borders. And the green bandana— have y’all seen the green bandana? I’m just curious. Yeah? Okay, cool, because I’ve mentioned the green bandana and people were like “What?” and I’m like, this is huge! This has become a symbol in all of Latin America, not only for legal abortion, but just in general, recognizing that we’re living in a context that is dealthy for us. Not only because of lack of abortion rights, but also because of femicide, because of a million different structural obstacles for women.
I wanted to show you all what also became a global phenomenon, which is this song by Las Tesis. Las Tesis is a collective from Chile, it’s only four people which is amazing because their song became this global anthem, pretty much, because they did it in such a good way. They just were so clear about their messaging. As the struggle for legal abortion is gaining momentum, at the same time this song became this viral, global phenomenon. I think it’s just really powerful and I want y’all to see it in case you haven’t, and if you have seen it, it’s all good you can see it again and feel all of that shiver of excitement.
*video is played*
Okay, so when this video went viral, this resulted in women all over the world recreating it in different parts of the world. I was part of several demonstrations and then it was recreated, I mean, I’ve got a photo there from France. There was thousands of women in Mexico, thousands of women all over the world, because it really was this moment where we’re like “We’re fucking sick of this bullshit! Not only are we getting killed, there’s impunity for our assassins. We can’t fucking abort safely” — because people are doing anyways. It was just this feeling of people were just so angry and so tired, and so needing to express this rage, and this very tiny dance and song so clearly articulated what we were feeling massively, right?
And if you see it, in all of these photos, you’ll see how the green bandana is this international symbol, at this point, for legal abortion. Because even though there are groups like us, and there are groups that are doing this work, there’s always going to be moments where it’s not enough. There’s always gonna be cases we can’t attend because of varying health issues. There’s always going to be crisis happening. There’s always going to be people who contact us and they’re 20 weeks pregnant and we’re like “We’re so sorry, we really can’t help you right now”. So we need legal abortion, we need it to be legal, even if we’re doing these amazing direct action groups and organizing, it’s just not enough. We need legal abortion.
And as I said, we’ve had some successes! Three years and we’ve had three major countries legalize abortion. So this is a victorious movement at this moment, right? We are not feeling— I feel like the energy I get from the US is people are resisting here, but it’s very exhausted, people are not feeling optimistic, rightfully so. And there’s another energy nearby.
What’s also really cool as all of this movement around bodily autonomy, the subject is also birthing other manifestations of feminism. For example cannabis feminism has gotten really huge, and that’s something that maybe people weren’t identifying as before, but people are starting to connect, like, “Okay, [it’s] my body, I want to be able to use the substances I want to use. I want to feel safe doing it, I don’t want to be stigmatized or criminalized for it”.
I want all of those women who are growing poppies, and growing coca to not be criminalized. All the women who are used in the drug trade for their bodies and to move and transport these substances, right? Because the war against drugs, the victims are women, right? Women are the ones that are in jail because their intimate partners are in the drug trade and they end up using these women to transport drugs, or these women are in desperate economic situations and the only way that they can feed their kids is by selling drugs. The face of the victim of the war on drugs is a woman’s face.
People are connecting this, this subject about legal abortion is now connected to cannabis, for example. There’s also a big movement around anti–speciesism, because all of these women are like “My body, my choice.” and it’s like, “Well, what about the female animals? What about all these animals whose uteruses and reproductive systems are being exploited systemically, massively, every day?” If I want my body to be respected, and I want to be able to do whatever the fuck I want with my body, then I want other female animals to also be able to do whatever they want and to be able to have healthy, safe maternities. Which the animal food system does not permit them to do and systemically exploits female animals.
This has become a big thing that you’ll see in a lot of the feminist marches and all of the March 8th, the International Women’s Day, marches. I know that they’re not huge here but in Latin America they’re massive! They are huge. You go to them and its-it’s incredible, everyone comes out for them. They’re a big deal. And so you’ll see this statement “We’re not oppressed, and we are not oppressors.” That’s been really cool, seeing how this movement is connecting with other movements.
That’s pretty much what I wanted to share. I was also really excited about opening the space up and hearing questions, comments, shared experiences, reflections, etc. from anyone who would like to share.
Question 1: You’ve covered it a little bit, but you talked about how a lot of y’all aren’t super qualified or whatever. What kind of qualifications are you looking for, for this sort of work and to be in that space and that sort of thing?
A: Yeah, so as grassroots organizers, we really try not to create very restrictive standards. I mean, really, the urgency is to the point where whoever can maintain a secure, who can make sure they follow our security guidelines, whoever is down to work in an ethical, communicative way, you can be part of our work. We always need more people. A lot of people stop working with us because of burnout. We do have basic trainings that we’ll offer new people, especially the people who do the companionship. They need to know basic protocols, they need to kind of have basic response methods to crisis and to people being overwhelmed. But we don’t really have a whole lot of qualifications other than keep us safe, and work ethically with us.
Q2: I have a couple questions. So I guess the first thing kind of connected to that is: I was a little confused with the process. When someone’s requesting a treatment, they pay a sliding scale? Just to clarify that. And then I was wondering: with new people getting involved if there’s any sort of vetting process, or something to do to make sure it’s not someone with mal intentions trying to get information or something like that.
A: Because we work in such a kind of low down low, not public at all sort of way, most of the people who come into the group are people we already know and we trust. We’ll usually check in with the people that we’re already working with before inviting them in, and make sure like “Hey, does this person feel safe? Do y’all know this person?” But yeah, we’re never putting out flyers being like “Volunteer with us!” or “We need help!” No, it’s just very low key.
And then yes, that’s how it works. So people will write to us, explain their situation, we’ll kind of reference among ourselves, “Hey, this person wrote and they said that this person was a reference, you recognize them?” We’ll try to figure out if we feel safe, and then we tell them they have to get an ultrasound. Once they send us the ultrasound, and we make sure that it’s safe for them to undergo the process, then we’ll ask for the contribution. And we’ll tell them “It’s this amount to this amount, sliding scale, and if you can’t pay it, let us know.” And that’s when we do the whole ATM transfer thing.
Q3: I guess my question is, if you aren’t able to openly talk about your organization, how are you able to raise money for the procedures and get them paid for?
A: With the sliding scale, pay it forward. Everyone is supposed to pay a sliding scale contribution, which is, the sliding scale we ask for is way lower than any other groups that we know of, or any doctor — there’s a lot of doctors who are doing this, obviously outside of their legal practice. But yeah, that’s how we do it. And we tell them that, like “What you donate to us or what you contribute to us permits us to buy more medication.” And that’s the way we make it work, because if not we couldn’t. Sometimes we’ll get donations but very infrequently. And it’s a way to make it sustainable too, you know? We don’t want to be depending on grants and donors, we want to just have a consistent system.
[The microphone didn’t reach many of the people who had questions, so the recording didn’t pick up all that was asked. We did our best here to understand the question, but it’s usually easy to get the general idea from the answer.]
Q4: Who does the ultrasounds?
A: The ultrasounds are done at general clinics or gynecologists. We often recommend Clinics Without Borders, they have lots of clinics in different parts where I live.
Q5: Can you talk about how you communicate with each other about the logistics if you’re worried about being observed by authorities? Or bad actors getting the contents of your communications through surveillance or disruption?
A: We communicate through signal groups, yeah. That’s the only thing that we use our personal phones for. But um, we do have the system down to the point where we all know our jobs and we know that if someone sends this information to this person, what it means as well. So we don’t have to be talking about it too much.
Q6: I know that you mentioned that its very religious in some of these communities where the abortions are taking place. Due to that, is there any longterm care for grief that y’all provide?
A: So we’ll do some companionship posts-the process, but we also have a list of trusted therapists that we will recommend to people if they need that. And then a lot of those therapists will accept sliding scale or have more accessible prices, or sometimes even just won’t charge.
Q7: *In Latin America, do folks from the Caribbean who to cross up up your way [toward the USA]…, are you all seeing more folks needing to access your services that are in the crossing process?
A: We do have people that are in the process of migration, but that’s kind of the thing that we need to improve on. It’s just walking the fine line between being accessible to a diverse range of folks, and then keeping ourselves safe and making it so we’re not common knowledge. It’s something that we kind of struggle with, and we still haven’t figured out the perfect way and there probably isn’t a perfect way, it’s kind of part of the territory.
Q8: With the ultrasounds, I guess you have people you recommend, does that deal with the worry that they could record these women having ultrasounds and then not coming to term. Do people just say they had a miscarriage?
A: There’s so many things that can happen in a pregnancy where the pregnancy does not result in the birth of a little human. These are not primary care providers, these are just random people who work in clinics who are doing this ultrasound and work with hundreds of clients a week maybe. A lot of what we do is calm people down because there is this fear of “What am I gonna get an ultrasound, this doctor is gonna know I didn’t have a kid! It’s like, how is that doctor gonna know? You don’t know that person? He doesn’t or she doesn’t know you. You’re just going in for an ultrasound just to see what’s going on. People go in for ultrasounds for all sorts of reasons. And there’s no obligation to follow through with that doctor who did that ultrasound and spontaneous miscarriage is super common. So that’s the thing we always say, “Oh, spontaneous miscarriage!”
Q9: I feel so humbled to hear what you are doing. That’s fantastic and thank you so much for coming. I just wanted to ask, and if this is too personal just tell me… I’m curious if you came to your feminism through your work or were you already intellectually there and then you started doing your work?
A: I came into this already identifying as a feminist and already being part of different groups and different collectives. But I think that when you grow up in Latin America, or anywhere really, you just know that there’s this need. And it’s very urgent, and it’s very constant and maybe it’s not visible, but there’s people needing abortions all the time everywhere. So you just kind of also come from a basic humanity place.
Q10: I live in an area where abortions have been really inaccessible. It was easier for me to get an abortion as a teenager in Indiana in 2005 than it was for me to help a friend get one in 2023. So what we’re experiencing now is that the cities are awash in all sorts of reproductive cares but the rural areas… services are extremely inaccessible. I was wondering if you could speak about ways we could try to develop different forms of outreach. And the ways that we’re walking fine lines here where if you’re in a city you’re more likely fine than if you live in the country.
A: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we do work with a lot of people in rural places. We have different ways. I mean, a lot of times we’ll get reference through people that know about us and that person. I think that the biggest issue is just letting those people know that we exist and while keeping ourselves safe, as I said before. As far as getting them the medications and that sort of thing, that’s what’s really awesome about pills, pills are tiny! You can put them in anything and mail them. But we usually don’t mail things because then we have to have an address and our name attached to that. In Latin America, it’s very common for buses to be used to transport packages. I don’t know, maybe something similar here that exists, but that bus system permits us to be able to send a package without having to give too much identifying information. They’ll ask us for our name, we’ll give a fake name. They’lll ask us for our ID number, we’ll give a fake ID number. They’re not going to check it in the system, they’ll just write it down on their paperwork. So that’s the way that we managed to get the actual supplies to them. And then because everything is through an encrypted email, and through Signal, that means that we just make sure that the person has Signal downloaded on their phone. That’s it, that’s the way we do it. Does that answer your question?
Q11: How do you map resources? Like where I move in rural Mississippi, we know some groups of libraries who are good to reach out to about abortion access and related resources…
A: Right, yeah. I mean, it’s kind of common, for example, for there to be groups of women that are organizing around other issues that aren’t really— for example, women farmers who are organizing in their area around farm work as women. And so we’ll maybe have one person who knows that group, so if anything arises in that community — because you know, rural communities, while they’re spread out, they’re also very tight knit, and everyone knows each other’s shit *laughs* — so if it comes up that there’s a case that needs to be dealt with, that person can contact us.
I would love for it to be, for example, in Argentina, where the women that trained us were like “Yeah, we just put up flyers in all the bathrooms of the bars.” And we’re like “What?!” We cannot do that, that is so sketchy for us. But they can and they can have in–person meetings with the people that they’re going to attend, that risk is not so high. So it’s every group and every person has to act according to their context.
Q12: Once someone gets a reference for abortion services, what questions do you ask next?
A: We will do some follow up questions. And then we’ll just use the responses as a way— we have turned people down, or they don’t want to give us information. And we understand that they maybe don’t, because they don’t know who we are. But we can’t put ourselves, we have very strong boundaries with ourselves, we will sometimes say “no” to cases where we feel bad about it, and we’re also like “If we take the risk with this one person, it means hundreds of other people are not going to get the access to the services they need”. We will put up strong boundaries, where we’re like “Sorry, we can’t help you.” If we get any sort of feeling like it’s kind of weird, we can’t help you. If we feel like the person is using other substances and other drugs, we can’t help you, and it sucks. It sucks to say no to someone and also it’s our self preservation and also our sustainability.
Q13: Have you ever experimented with using drop boxes or finding places to set up meetings?
A: No we have not. I think that there’s different reasons of why we haven’t. First of all, because it just feels sketchier in a way where the person might not be able to find the thing, or we have to explain overly detailed, or we have to have an X— if we’re using the same hiding spot over and over again, if we’re being surveilled, they’re gonna find out pretty quickly.
Q14: I was thinking different hiding spots. It seems like the possible sketchy point is the person giving the thing to the driver; the person on the other end knows where that is so someone could go there, but planting something and somewhere and leave it there.
A: I think it’s also just for the logistical part of it. The person who is sending the medications could be doing this three to ten times a week. Can you imagine having ten different hiding spots, and describing it and being like “Oh, you can’t find it. Here. Let me try to send you a photo” or whatever, here’s so many things. I know it does seem sketchy, when we started using the Lyft thing it did seem sketchy. At the same time, it just works. It works really well. The drivers just assume it’s just whatever package they don’t care. They’re doing the 25th delivery of the day, they’re like, “Okay, I’ll take your package, and I’ll deliver to this person” because of the fact that the other person requests that on their app. The only moments where we’re kind of vulnerable is the moment where we actually give it to that person [the driver], but then we leave, we never give it to them from our homes.
Q15: Here those medications are prescription, so how do you get them filled?
A: We work with international groups that send them to us in packages, and they’re camouflaged in really funny ways. But yeah, I mean, if anyone wants to talk more specifically, certain details, feel free to come and talk to me and I will tell you what I feel comfortable telling you. But yeah, there’s international groups that do a lot of this and do it from places where this is legal and there’s a lot of ease around getting these medications and there’s a lot of doctors that are working with us, which is really cool. We’ve used different systems, for a while there were doctors in different countries that would write us prescriptions for that country. And then if someone had a trip there, they could go and buy a shit ton of pills.
Q16: Are most of the people volunteers? How do you balance that with the different hours of peoples wage jobs and volunteering hours and sustainability of not burning out?
A: It’s part of what we struggle with. We try to do schedules, we try to take breaks, it’s a struggle sometimes. And then also, it’s interesting, sometimes we’ll be super busy, and have tons of people asking for our services, and then sometimes we won’t get an email for two to three weeks, and we’re like “…alright”. And it’s actually I would love to kind of study why it is that we get these avalanches of cases and then why we’ll have weeks where we don’t get anything. I just am curious about what influences that. But yeah, part of the work is balancing and I think that that’s why we’re always trying to, like, amongst our safe activist friends, recruit so that we can take breaks and then come in when someone else needs a break.
Cool. Thanks for all the questions. I hope this is useful.