Speaker 1: The first thing that drove me to the story was
Speaker 1: the pill, and actually through the reporting and spending time
Speaker 1: in Latin America following how the information spread so quickly,
Speaker 1: how these women built support systems around this pill, I
Speaker 1: understood that that was the real story.
Speaker 2: From Futuro Media and PRX, it's Latino USA. I'm Maria
Speaker 2: Jojosa today a conversation about the making of the Network.
Speaker 2: It's a new series that follows the women who transformed
Speaker 2: abortion access around the world by taking abortion out of
Speaker 2: the clinic or Latino USA listener, you know, these past
Speaker 2: few days, we've brought you the Network. It's a new
Speaker 2: series that Latino USA co produced with NPR's Embedded podcast,
Speaker 2: and it's about this network of women, not an established
Speaker 2: organization of any kind, but just women who were helping
Speaker 2: other women to have safe abortions without a doctor present
Speaker 2: and regardless of the law. And by doing this, the
Speaker 2: women and these networks completely transformed abortion access around the world.
Speaker 2: Latino USA producers and hosts of this series, Marta Martinez
Speaker 2: and Victoria Estrada, have taken us to Brazil in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, where the women there made this surprising discovery
Speaker 2: about mesoprostol and how you can use this ulcer pill
Speaker 2: to actually have a safe abortion at home. Then Martin
Speaker 2: and Victoria reported on how the network continued to grow,
Speaker 2: how it changed tactics and eventually was even able to
Speaker 2: help change the law around abortion in many countries. So
Speaker 2: if you haven't listened to this series, please do. It's
Speaker 2: just great history and great journalism. You can find all
Speaker 2: of the episodes on the embedded feed or look for
Speaker 2: them on this feed. But today we wanted to bring
Speaker 2: you a behind the scenes conversation about how the series
Speaker 2: was made. Victoria and Marta have been reporting for this
Speaker 2: series for over a year. They traveled all over the
Speaker 2: Americas in order to reconstruct a story that spans for decades,
Speaker 2: and they're going to tell us all about it. Welcome
Speaker 2: Marta and Victoria.
Speaker 3: Hi Mariya, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Hi Madia. So you know, I'm part of the generation
Speaker 2: that in the United States it becomes politicized because of
Speaker 2: the issue of abortion, the passage of Roe v. Wade, right,
Speaker 2: But also I understand the Latin American component because I
Speaker 2: studied Latin American studies and I was a feminist. So
Speaker 2: for me, this is a story that I kind of
Speaker 2: have known. And what I wanted to ask you was,
Speaker 2: how did the both of you are much younger than me,
Speaker 2: come upon this moment and say, wow, we really need
Speaker 2: to tell this story.
Speaker 1: I think for me it was having reported on reproductive
Speaker 1: rights for many years in Latin America. It's pretty clear
Speaker 1: there that this is how you have an abortion. For
Speaker 1: most regular people, they will take me so prostal and
Speaker 1: I really wanted to tell that story, but also the
Speaker 1: origin of how this was discovered, because it's actually a
Speaker 1: fascinating story, the fact that it was actually appeal that
Speaker 1: was invented for something completely different like stomach problems, and
Speaker 1: it's this quote unquote side effect.
Speaker 2: I mean, whoever it was that was able to unlock
Speaker 2: that and we don't know, right we don't. That's pretty incredible. Yeah, Nctodia,
Speaker 2: what about you? How did you come to this story?
Speaker 3: I live in Mexico and I've been covering also Latin America,
Speaker 3: also Latin communities in the US. But I think that
Speaker 3: once you're reporting and you pay attention, you see the
Speaker 3: story of feminism in Latin America, how it's been like
Speaker 3: for the last couple of decades, women have been organizing
Speaker 3: because there are a lot of issues that they face
Speaker 3: in their specific countries, and when you start to look
Speaker 3: at it, abortion has been like a very strong component
Speaker 3: of the activism and the organizing, you start to see,
Speaker 3: like all of the collectives, it's not just institutions. It
Speaker 3: literally can be just like women who know about it.
Speaker 3: And so we were really thinking about that when the
Speaker 3: overturn of Wade happened in twenty twenty two. So I
Speaker 3: think that for us the connection was like very natural
Speaker 3: and clear to try to follow this story.
Speaker 2: This is a story to me that is as much
Speaker 2: about the issue of reproductive justice and reproductive rights as
Speaker 2: it is about living, breathing feminism, women organizing, women having
Speaker 2: a whole way of operating that is outside of just
Speaker 2: institutional norms. So that part of the story Marta, the
Speaker 2: Feminist Test is really extraordinary.
Speaker 1: What I found fascinating is how women actually came up
Speaker 1: with this whole system of taking care of each other
Speaker 1: that was very different from what you will find in
Speaker 1: the traditional medical system. And just being able to document
Speaker 1: that is something that has been a goal for us
Speaker 1: because this was just women experimenting on their own and
Speaker 1: no one really.
Speaker 4: From those bigger institutions.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of people were paying attention at the time,
Speaker 1: and so I think it needs to be documented that
Speaker 1: this happened, and how it happened, and who were the
Speaker 1: people who made that happen right Because they were taking
Speaker 1: a lot of risks because in these countries abortion was
Speaker 1: pretty much banned. They could end up in prison, and
Speaker 1: that's also probably part of the reason why they were
Speaker 1: not keeping track. In many cases, not all of the groups,
Speaker 1: but many of the groups. It was dangerous to keep
Speaker 1: track of things.
Speaker 2: You had to go back and essentially find people who
Speaker 2: were actively engaged in multiple parts of this story in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and eighties. You know, I was alive
Speaker 2: at that time. It's not like one hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: but finding people in Brazil to be able to talk
Speaker 2: about this. Can you just share a little bit of
Speaker 2: how you found some of the people who were actually
Speaker 2: on the front lines, whether it's the doctor from Casife
Speaker 2: or it's the woman who can see Cristo from her
Speaker 2: apartment in Rio de Ja Neeiro. I love your descriptions.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about how you did this
Speaker 2: deep reporting.
Speaker 3: We started reporting on this, doing research about this over
Speaker 3: a year ago. So we had like some ideas, but
Speaker 3: we knew that we needed to go on the ground.
Speaker 3: We were actually able to go to Brazil, and so
Speaker 3: when we got there, they start telling like the more
Speaker 3: personal how they were living, what they were doing. We
Speaker 3: mentioned this very briefly in the story, but Brazil was
Speaker 3: coming out of the dictatorship in the mid eighties, and
Speaker 3: so there was a lot of organizing in Brazil. The
Speaker 3: moment Mestill came out, there was a lot of movement.
Speaker 3: It was very prime because women were already organizing to
Speaker 3: try to get rights into the constitution, and so women
Speaker 3: started building knowledge just like by sharing with each other.
Speaker 3: That really informed our reporting, like, oh, it really is
Speaker 3: the women. The women are connecting with each other and
Speaker 3: it's this network.
Speaker 1: Before we went to Brazil, we were like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: think once we are on the ground, we're going to
Speaker 1: find someone. And then we were on the ground and
Speaker 1: we were talking to all these activists, all these experts,
Speaker 1: and we would always ask at the end of the interview,
Speaker 1: do you happen to know someone who took side to
Speaker 1: tech in the late nineteen eighties, And their answer kind
Speaker 1: of surprised us. They always said no, I don't know
Speaker 1: anyone directly, Like I've studied this, I've been, you know,
Speaker 1: learning so much about this throughout history, but I don't
Speaker 1: know anyone personally. So we understood that there was a
Speaker 1: big class element involved. Those were not the people who
Speaker 1: were actually experimenting with side at tech. It was poor women.
Speaker 1: And so we ended up finding the person and we
Speaker 1: cannot give a lot of details because we need to
Speaker 1: protect her identity, but basically it was through a personal
Speaker 1: connection of one of the local journalists who helped us
Speaker 1: when we were in Brazil. So it was really interesting
Speaker 1: to understand that we needed to break that class barrier
Speaker 1: to really find the people who were taking those risks.
Speaker 2: Which actually, on the issue of reproductive justice and reproductive rights,
Speaker 2: the issue of class is central, it really is. There
Speaker 2: was another thing that was happening that I was profoundly
Speaker 2: fascinated by, which is these in guentros. They were gatherings
Speaker 2: of thousands of women activists, the incuentros that you talk about,
Speaker 2: like you could just imagine that there were either panels
Speaker 2: or that it was being exchanged in the hallways, which
Speaker 2: is there's another way to have a abortion. Have you heard?
Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about these incuentros,
Speaker 2: what you know and how important it was when you
Speaker 2: kind of uncovered that and you're reporting.
Speaker 4: So these in quentro's.
Speaker 1: Started happening in the mid nineteen eighties in Latin America,
Speaker 1: especially in Argentina. They are very, very strong, and I
Speaker 1: became obsessed with this one in quentro in particular that
Speaker 1: was for all of Latin America, and it took place
Speaker 1: in San Bernardo, which is.
Speaker 4: A coastal city in Argentina.
Speaker 1: I think it's more like a Florida kind of place,
Speaker 1: so a place where people go on vacation, and it
Speaker 1: was the low season, so they actually got better deals,
Speaker 1: so that's why they decided to do it there. And
Speaker 1: there were more than three thousand women. And I found
Speaker 1: this incredible footage by a historian named Lola Luna who
Speaker 1: filmed during the encuentro, and you see all these young
Speaker 1: women with the like big glasses and perms, the way
Speaker 1: it was that kind of place that looked like there
Speaker 1: was a lot going on, like women were really kind
Speaker 1: of thinking together about their priorities, about how to rethink gender,
Speaker 1: how to rethink power structures.
Speaker 4: And in the nineteen ninety and.
Speaker 1: Quintro, a lot of things happened for abortion particularly, and
Speaker 1: some Argentinian doctors actually decided it's time to do a
Speaker 1: workshop only focused on abortion, because usually it would be like,
Speaker 1: let's talk about health issues more generally, but that year
Speaker 1: they were like, no, we're going to do one workshop.
Speaker 4: Dedicated to abortion.
Speaker 1: Actually, I interviewed mamel Bianco, one of the organizers of
Speaker 1: this workshop, and she told me this, we suppose.
Speaker 2: Are going to be a small group and we find
Speaker 2: more than So what happened here all was abortion.
Speaker 4: Abortion.
Speaker 2: Everybody was talking about that if you open a kid
Speaker 2: or something and explode.
Speaker 1: Also, something else that happened that was very interesting is
Speaker 1: that they declared that September twenty eighth was going to
Speaker 1: be the International Day for Safe Abortion. So it really
Speaker 1: became a priority for feminists in that particular meeting. And
Speaker 1: then what surprised me in terms of our story following
Speaker 1: what happened to the pill. What happened to me so
Speaker 1: is that it's not like the Brazilians were doing like
Speaker 1: a whole you know, PowerPoint presentation on how to use MISO.
Speaker 2: I don't know if powerpoints existed at that.
Speaker 1: Point, I know, but you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not like they went there and explained this is
Speaker 1: what we use now and this is how you take
Speaker 1: it and this is what you do.
Speaker 4: It literally was something they were sharing in whispers.
Speaker 1: It's something that they were sharing in the hallways when
Speaker 1: they were having lunch together. And actually it had the
Speaker 1: biggest impact of all right, Like that's the one thing
Speaker 1: that really transformed access to a for for millions of
Speaker 1: women in the future.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit more of Victoria
Speaker 2: about the importance of the feminist movement in Latin America
Speaker 2: and what it's doing today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that one thing that is important about
Speaker 3: the feminist movement in Latin America is that it's not
Speaker 3: focused on one issue, like people reach out one collective
Speaker 3: can't cover everything, so they can form a lot of
Speaker 3: alliances with each others even that if they're doing different things.
Speaker 3: And one example of that is the symbol for the
Speaker 3: abortion rights movement in Latin America, which is the green bandana.
Speaker 3: We actually spoke with Marta Alanis. She was one of
Speaker 3: the activists who back in the early two thousands came
Speaker 3: up with the idea of using the bandana. And this
Speaker 3: is Marta Alanis to Mamozilla. Mala Alanis said that they
Speaker 3: decided to wear a bean like the Madrees Mayo did.
Speaker 3: These were a group of mothers in Argentina who protested
Speaker 3: at Mayo Square during the military dictatorship, and they demanded
Speaker 3: for their children who had been disappeared by the military
Speaker 3: to be returned, and they all wore white bandanas over
Speaker 3: their heads. Then this became a symbol for justice and
Speaker 3: for human rights, and so Alani's and the abortion activists
Speaker 3: decided to pay the so much, but they changed the color.
Speaker 3: And Alanis also explained to us why they decided to
Speaker 3: make the bandana greenna.
Speaker 4: You know, if poor Elila is a total.
Speaker 3: She says that purple was already taken by the feminist movement,
Speaker 3: and for them also green symbolized life and nature, so
Speaker 3: they decided to go with green. And the green bandana
Speaker 3: eventually turned into the green wave movement in Latin America.
Speaker 3: And it has this whole imagery of it's a movement,
Speaker 3: it's massive and it can have a place for everyone.
Speaker 3: So it's not like everyone has the same politics inside
Speaker 3: the movement. They don't agree with everything. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of discussions of tactics and what are the specific objectives.
Speaker 3: But it is a massive movement in Latin America around
Speaker 3: women's rights.
Speaker 2: Well, as you can tell, I'm a big fan of
Speaker 2: the work, mostly because it's just really phenomenal journalism documenting
Speaker 2: something we all need to know. So I have a
Speaker 2: lot of takeaways myself. But you've been both immersed in
Speaker 2: this reporting for a long time. It is out in
Speaker 2: the world. Now, what's your takeaway after having dedicated like
Speaker 2: a chunk of your journalistic endeavor to reporting on the network.
Speaker 1: I think for me, one thing I've learned is that
Speaker 1: the first thing that drove me to the story was
Speaker 1: the pill and the discovery of the pill, and actually
Speaker 1: through the reporting and spending time in Latin America following
Speaker 1: how the information spread so quickly, how these women built
Speaker 1: support systems around this pill, I understood that that was
Speaker 1: the real story.
Speaker 4: It wasn't only just this super creative discovery.
Speaker 1: It was actually the fact that the women understood this
Speaker 1: is powerful, even though maybe we don't have institutional support
Speaker 1: to do this. And I was very interested in learning
Speaker 1: that there was a whole tension and debate about how
Speaker 1: far are you willing to go to make that happen.
Speaker 1: How far are you willing to go to help others
Speaker 1: in the way you think they should be helped, and
Speaker 1: also that you can actually I don't want to sound cheesy,
Speaker 1: but like there is power in the collective.
Speaker 4: Actually trusting each other, building.
Speaker 1: Something together is going to be a lot more powerful
Speaker 1: than just relying on.
Speaker 4: One pill you can buy at the pharmacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean tiny tiny steps that you think, what
Speaker 2: am I really changing here? It all adds up, Victoria,
Speaker 2: take us out.
Speaker 3: Just being able to follow this pill through all the decades,
Speaker 3: follow the movement through all the countries and now to
Speaker 3: the United States. I think you do see like a
Speaker 3: very specific things that are happening in each place, the barriers,
Speaker 3: the culture, but also like all of the testimonies of
Speaker 3: the people who use the pill, who are supported by
Speaker 3: either like a collective or someone a friend, a family, mother, someone.
Speaker 3: The way this method is being used by the women,
Speaker 3: how their experiences like mirror each other, going all the
Speaker 3: way back to the eighties until now, I think that
Speaker 3: was very.
Speaker 2: Powerful, all the way back to the eighties. You know,
Speaker 2: so again, listener, it's whispers among women that then lead
Speaker 2: to super loud voices Thank you so much Marta Martinez
Speaker 2: and Victoria Estradra for your reporting on our new series,
Speaker 2: our collaboration with Embedded from NPR. It's called The Network,
Speaker 2: and you are going to want to listen to this.
Speaker 2: You are going to learn so much and it's because
Speaker 2: of great journalists like Martin and Vittoria. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for your work.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Adiah.
Speaker 2: Remember, dear listener, you can find all of the episodes
Speaker 2: of the Network on MPR's Embedded feed or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Sam Jay Leads.
Speaker 2: It was edited by Benny le Ramirez. It was mixed
Speaker 2: by jj Carubin. Fact checking for this episode by Roxana Aghiri.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to the International Women's Media Foundation for funding
Speaker 2: this reporting in Brazil. It's part of their Reproductive Health,
Speaker 2: Rights and Justice in the America's initiative. The Futuro Plus
Speaker 2: team includes production managers Francis Poon and Jessica Ellis, marketing
Speaker 2: manager Luis Luna, development manager Genetzi Men, and engineers Gabriela
Speaker 2: Bayez and Stephanie Lebou. The Latino USA team also includes
Speaker 2: Roxana Guire, Julia Caruso, Felicia Doo, Minuez, Domiquinestrosa, Renaldo Leanos Junior,
Speaker 2: Andrea Lopez Gruzsado, Julieta Martinelli, Monica Morelis Garcia, Tasha Sandoel
Speaker 2: Nour Saudi and Nancy Trujillo. Fernando Echavari is our managing editor.
Speaker 2: Benille Ramirez, Maria Garcia and I are co executive producers
Speaker 2: and I'm your host Marino Jssa. Join us again on
Speaker 2: our next episode. ETU Saves not Bay. Yes Bai.
Speaker 3: Latino USA is brought to you in part by the
Speaker 3: Levi Strauss Foundation, outfit movements and leaders fighting for a
Speaker 3: more just and abundant world, with the support from the
Speaker 3: International Women's Media Foundation as part of its Reproductive Health,
Speaker 3: Rights and Justice in the America's initiative, and the v
Speaker 3: Day Foundation