Speaker 1: Hey, their dear listener. It's Marie Noo Hossan and today
Speaker 1: we're sharing with you episode two of the Network. It's
Speaker 1: a new series that Latino USA co produced with NPR's
Speaker 1: Embedded podcast. Now, if you haven't listened to the first episode,
Speaker 1: of course, I recommend that you do that first. Check
Speaker 1: it out on the embedded feed or listen to last
Speaker 1: week's Latino USA podcast. In the first episode, Latino USA
Speaker 1: producers Marta Martinez and Victoria Estrada traveled to Brazil in
Speaker 1: order to trace the roots of an unexpected discovery, an
Speaker 1: ulcer pill that could be used to have safe abortions
Speaker 1: without a doctor. A network of Brazilian women started whispering
Speaker 1: about that pill, Cytotech. It's the commercial name of Miso Prosto,
Speaker 1: which is also known as Miso. But that's not where
Speaker 1: the story ends, because soon word of that discovery would
Speaker 1: cross borders, and it brought the network into a new
Speaker 1: era in which women were using new tactics to get
Speaker 1: the word out and they started working on a much
Speaker 1: larger scale. Mittoria and Martha are going to take it
Speaker 1: from here. This is episode two of the network.
Speaker 2: Saintotech. That was the name that some Brazilian doctors started
Speaker 2: calling sidetech in the nineteen eighties because far fewer women
Speaker 2: were dying from abortion complications thanks to this ulcer pill,
Speaker 2: but not everyone was ready to canonize it. During the nineties,
Speaker 2: the Brazilian government cracked down on side attack the commercial
Speaker 2: name of misoprostol, or Misto for short. Eventually, the government
Speaker 2: banned the medication and labeled it a controlled substance, which
Speaker 2: meant miso had restrictions similar to what dangerous drugs like
Speaker 2: fentanyl now have, and conditions got harsh for women who
Speaker 2: had abortions. The government targeted them more and more arrested them.
Speaker 2: In charge is distributing me so and what prosecutors called
Speaker 2: self induced abortion.
Speaker 3: Oh my fashion.
Speaker 4: A cleaning lady has been arrested. She suspected of having
Speaker 4: a clandestine abortion.
Speaker 5: But despite official attempts to control me so, the secret
Speaker 5: was out Reproactive health workers in Latin America heard about
Speaker 5: the pill when they traveled. Some people got some from Columbia,
Speaker 5: and then some people got some from Brazil from a
Speaker 5: Peruvian city in the Amazon jungle. And she said, here
Speaker 5: we use a bill, And I said, what bill is that?
Speaker 5: Two huge feminist gatherings across Latin America called quintros, where
Speaker 5: women chatted about it in the hallways.
Speaker 3: We were in a group talking and they said.
Speaker 6: Look, we've been using Cytottech and it's working well.
Speaker 5: Part of the pill was moving out of Brazil to
Speaker 5: countries where abortion was also mostly banned and deeply stigmatized.
Speaker 1: And so we were just like, well, well, how do
Speaker 1: we use.
Speaker 2: This activists who are getting their hands on me? So
Speaker 2: saw its potential widespread access to safe abortions, but to
Speaker 2: make that happen, they needed to get organized, which sparked
Speaker 2: a whole new set of questions.
Speaker 5: How could they talk about something that had been almost unspeakable,
Speaker 5: and even if they did, was talking enough. This episode,
Speaker 5: we're going to Ecuador, Argentina, and Mexico, all places where
Speaker 5: the women who make up this diffuse network took on
Speaker 5: these questions, teaming up, challenging each other, sometimes even breaking
Speaker 5: the law to change it. I'm Marta MARTINEV, I'm Victoria Estrada,
Speaker 5: and this is the network A serious about the diy
Speaker 5: me that took safe abortions out of the clinic and
Speaker 5: the women who made it happen.
Speaker 2: Episode two, Breaking Bread the activist in Latin America who
Speaker 2: knew about Miso had a problem. Abortion was highly criminalized,
Speaker 2: it was stigmatized. How could they get women access to
Speaker 2: something illegal, something that was shrouded in shame.
Speaker 5: The obvious option was to keep the conversation and their
Speaker 5: actions hidden, whispering sister to sister, and that's basically what
Speaker 5: happened for more than a decade.
Speaker 2: But in two thousand and eight, activists in Latin America
Speaker 2: took a totally different tack. In the middle of Quito, Ecuador,
Speaker 2: there's a statue of a virgin lavir ghindl Panicido. She's
Speaker 2: slightly taller than Rio di Janeto's famous Christ the Redeemer.
Speaker 2: She has wings spread out like an angel. One day,
Speaker 2: a group of women decided to pull a stunt. They
Speaker 2: were a mix of Ecuadorian activists and activists from Women
Speaker 2: on Waves, an abortion axis organization based in the Netherlands.
Speaker 2: They plotted how to get to the statue's balcony without
Speaker 2: attracting attention.
Speaker 3: There are two guards there, so we need some beautiful
Speaker 3: blonze to distract them.
Speaker 2: A twenty fourteen documentary called Vessel recorded their efforts.
Speaker 3: We are occupying the Virgin let a lot of women.
Speaker 2: They hung a big white banner on the balcony of
Speaker 2: the Virgin Statue. The banner said safe abortion with a
Speaker 2: phone number. That number was for the first abortion hotline
Speaker 2: in Latin America. The documentary shows them getting nearly eighty
Speaker 2: calls within the first few hours.
Speaker 6: Hello saloons.
Speaker 2: This idea for a hotline and the stunt promoting it
Speaker 2: through the Latin American network into a new, more public era.
Speaker 2: They reached thousands of women this way. Their work was bold,
Speaker 2: it was organized, and maybe most importantly, it was replicable.
Speaker 2: Women in other countries had been watching what happened in Ecuador,
Speaker 2: and a.
Speaker 5: Year later Argentina started its own hotline, and so initial.
Speaker 4: In the beginning, the hot line was so bare bones
Speaker 4: the view of the We had a small backpack with
Speaker 4: the Nokia eleven hundred.
Speaker 5: Militian and notebooks and.
Speaker 4: Flash cards and a process we had built rigorously.
Speaker 5: This is Anamins, one of the first volunteers of the
Speaker 5: Argentinian helpline. She was part of the collective Lesbians and
Speaker 5: Feminists for Abortion Decriminalization. She and I talked in her
Speaker 5: living room in Buenos Aires, with her cat sitting on
Speaker 5: her lap. It was starting to face. She told me
Speaker 5: that when they started the helpline in the summer of
Speaker 5: two thousand and nine, they were just a dozen volunteers.
Speaker 5: They didn't climb a statue. Instead, they put up posters
Speaker 5: and stickers all over Buenos Aires. They were on TV
Speaker 5: where they shared their phone number AKINCE, and they had
Speaker 5: a weekly radio show on the channel Agent. Pretty Soon
Speaker 5: the helpline was flooded with calls.
Speaker 4: Demand was four more. It was always for a lot more.
Speaker 5: Volunteers gave callers step by step information on how to
Speaker 5: self manage an abortion.
Speaker 2: With MISO and Argentina, no one had ever done what
Speaker 2: this collective was doing, speaking so openly about abortions and
Speaker 2: how to do it on your own. Not everyone was
Speaker 2: happy about it.
Speaker 5: I said, do we have to do this so public?
Speaker 5: You are nuts.
Speaker 2: This is Mariana Romero, the executive director of STATIS, the
Speaker 2: Center for State and Society Studies. She's a prominent reproductive
Speaker 2: health researcher and advocate for abortion rights in Argentina. Marianna
Speaker 2: and other feminists worried that the helpline could inadvertently reduce
Speaker 2: access to me.
Speaker 6: So you are going to make the pharmaceutical company that
Speaker 6: produced mysoposal take it out of that market.
Speaker 2: That wasn't the only risk of their work. The helpline
Speaker 2: was operating in uncharted territory since abortion was mostly banned.
Speaker 2: The volunteers worried any work they did on abortion could
Speaker 2: put them or the women they helped in jail. But
Speaker 2: as the years passed, no helpline volunteers were ever arrested.
Speaker 5: And so they got more provocative with the way they
Speaker 5: talked about abortion. A year after launching the helpline, they
Speaker 5: printed a manual explaining how to self manage an abortion
Speaker 5: by taking miso without a doctor. It's thorough, more than
Speaker 5: one hundred pages long. The cover is all pink, with
Speaker 5: two big rainbows and a bunch of bills with smiley
Speaker 5: faces and on the back.
Speaker 4: On the back, I had a picture of a Barbie
Speaker 4: and a huge rainbow.
Speaker 5: She's in a pink convertible with sunglasses and a glamorous
Speaker 5: scarf over her head.
Speaker 4: And in a fun fun it said Barbie had to go.
Speaker 4: It was awesome, Barbie said.
Speaker 5: Anna says women were hungry for this information.
Speaker 4: It was a best seller. I had two printings of
Speaker 4: ten thousand copies each.
Speaker 5: Anna like a lot of the early helpline volunteers is
Speaker 5: a lesbian. She saw echoes of her own experience in
Speaker 5: the shame and stigma that women faced when they wanted
Speaker 5: an abortion. She says the helpline and the manual were
Speaker 5: driven by a lesbian philosophy.
Speaker 4: The now closet, refusing to be in the closet no
Speaker 4: stigma of getting out there and saying yes, we're.
Speaker 5: Here, being public was one pillar of the helpline strategy.
Speaker 5: The other was relying on science. Both the manual and
Speaker 5: the script that the helpline volunteers used were based on
Speaker 5: scientific research.
Speaker 2: Starting in the nineties, researchers from around the world had
Speaker 2: taken an interest in what Latin American activists had been doing.
Speaker 2: They ran studies on women taking miso to end their
Speaker 2: pregnancies in places all over the globe, from Africa to
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia. Sometimes researchers worked in partnership with the activist.
Speaker 2: Over and over. They found that using miso in this
Speaker 2: way was safe and effective, and they developed best practices
Speaker 2: for it. Their research led the World Health Organization to
Speaker 2: add miso to its Essential Medicines list in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five. Helpline volunteers cited this body of research on
Speaker 2: their calls, and it gave them credibility. By the twenty tens,
Speaker 2: the helpline and the manual were disseminating all that scientific
Speaker 2: information to tens of thousands of women in Argentina.
Speaker 5: Anna herself was able to help thousands of women through
Speaker 5: the helpline, but sometimes as she spoke to women, Anna
Speaker 5: wanted to stay in touch.
Speaker 4: If a specific story affected me and made me anxious
Speaker 4: and I wanted to stay involved, a colleague would say, no, no,
Speaker 4: it's not your role. We didn't have the capacity, and
Speaker 4: in political terms, that wasn't our project.
Speaker 2: But other activists were concerned. They were aware of all
Speaker 2: the hype around abortion health lines, but skeptical about the approach.
Speaker 3: How do you know for sure that those women are
Speaker 3: not at risk? You gave them information and then what no.
Speaker 5: Less concilio.
Speaker 3: Did she get appeals or didn't she? Did she end
Speaker 3: up in the hospital? Did she do something wrong? You
Speaker 3: actually don't know anything.
Speaker 2: This is Veronica Cruz who goes by Verto. She's an
Speaker 2: activist in Mexico doing something completely different than the helplines,
Speaker 2: something that would push the envelope much further. After the break,
Speaker 2: we follow Vetro to Mexico.
Speaker 5: The helplines, the Barbie manual. All of it was aimed
Speaker 5: at spreading the word about Miso and changing how people
Speaker 5: were talking about abortion.
Speaker 2: But Veronica, who you heard for the break and who
Speaker 2: goes vi Vero didn't think spreading information was enough. She
Speaker 2: used a different strategy in the feminist collective she started
Speaker 2: in Mexico. The collective is called Las Libres, which means
Speaker 2: the free.
Speaker 7: Las libres is maybe de la compagna Minto's maybe deloiquatro
Speaker 7: cie Las.
Speaker 3: Libres is my life. A companiamentto is my life. I
Speaker 3: can do it twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2: A companiamento. That's the name of her approach.
Speaker 5: Usually people translate a companiamento as accompaniment. It's not a
Speaker 5: word you use in English very often, but in Spanish
Speaker 5: you hear it all the time. It can mean being
Speaker 5: with someone but also supporting them or just keeping them company.
Speaker 2: I love the root of the word, which comes from
Speaker 2: Latin companies. It means the people you break bread with,
Speaker 2: your companions, the people you trust.
Speaker 5: And for abortion, it's come to mean being there during
Speaker 5: the whole process, from beginning to end, regardless of the legal.
Speaker 2: Risks based on our reporting. Veto's collective Las Liveres, was
Speaker 2: the first group in Latin America and possibly the world,
Speaker 2: to start doing accompanimento with miso why not Positions? I
Speaker 2: visited Veto last fall at the Las Liveres office in Juanajuato,
Speaker 2: a city in central Mexico. Wow, stovill la vista. Their
Speaker 2: office is more homey than corporate. It's in a three
Speaker 2: story house that's nestled into the hills.
Speaker 5: Akisi Yea.
Speaker 2: Veto founded lasire Is nearly a decade before any of
Speaker 2: the helplines started. At the time, abortion in Mexico was
Speaker 2: essentially banned in the state where Veto lives. The only
Speaker 2: exception was for women who were raped, but even in
Speaker 2: those cases, hospitals often denied women the right to the procedure.
Speaker 2: So Vedo was working with a Gayna college is to
Speaker 2: help women who'd been raped get legal abortions, and in
Speaker 2: two thousand, this doctor, like a growing number of doctors
Speaker 2: around the world, started to use miso for abortions. Veto
Speaker 2: remembers the first time she saw the doctor give a
Speaker 2: woman miso.
Speaker 5: I was like, what, no way.
Speaker 2: It was nothing like a surgical abortion, and Veto had
Speaker 2: a realization I mean I.
Speaker 3: Can do it cost Yes, I can just buy the
Speaker 3: pills tell the woman how to use them. That was
Speaker 3: like an incredible discovery for me.
Speaker 2: Not long after, a woman came to the last Liveless
Speaker 2: office Medico.
Speaker 3: She told me I'm not a rape victim, but I
Speaker 3: also want to interrupt.
Speaker 2: Interrupt her pregnancy. This woman didn't qualify for legal abortion
Speaker 2: in Mexico because she wasn't a rape survivor. So Veto
Speaker 2: didn't send her to the doctor.
Speaker 6: And I think.
Speaker 5: Victim Ada lession I.
Speaker 3: Said, we don't have to tell anyone if she was
Speaker 3: or wasn't a victim, that it's going to stay here
Speaker 3: between us.
Speaker 2: Veto decided to accompany the woman through the whole process,
Speaker 2: even though it was risky. Where Vero lived, any method
Speaker 2: of ending a pregnancy that wasn't a result of rape
Speaker 2: carried a prison sentence for the woman and anyone who
Speaker 2: helped her. But unlike in Brazil, in Mexico, misa was
Speaker 2: easy to get. Even though you technically needed a prescription,
Speaker 2: you could often get it over the counter. So Veto
Speaker 2: told the woman to just go buy the pills, and
Speaker 2: she did. She got the miso and went home.
Speaker 5: Sando I was always.
Speaker 2: Monitoring her for any complications. Even though Veto had seen
Speaker 2: how the pills work, how easy it was to use them,
Speaker 2: she says it was nerve wracking to support someone through
Speaker 2: an abortion without a doctor.
Speaker 3: Then, so I slept with my cel phone on my
Speaker 3: chest all the time, like in case it rank or something.
Speaker 2: The next day, the woman went to a doctor who
Speaker 2: confirmed her pregnancy had ended without any complications. Veto's first
Speaker 2: time doing accompaniamento had gone smoothly. After that, when someone
Speaker 2: contacted las Levitz for an abortion and they were not
Speaker 2: rape survivors, Las Leivas didn't send her to the kindacologists
Speaker 2: they'd been working with. They handled it themselves.
Speaker 3: We promised ourselves that we were never going to leave
Speaker 3: anyone without access whatever we had to do.
Speaker 2: If a woman couldn't afford to buy miso, which was
Speaker 2: expensive in Mexico, Las Leaves would give her the pills
Speaker 2: for free. If a woman could afford me. So sometimes
Speaker 2: she had left over pills. Veto suggested what to do
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 6: Q two.
Speaker 3: I told them the next woman who comes, you are
Speaker 3: going to give her the pills as a gift, and
Speaker 3: you are going to tell her about your experience.
Speaker 2: Veto would set up a meeting between the two women
Speaker 2: in a park or at a mall. The woman who'd
Speaker 2: had an abortion would share her leftover pills and her story. Eventually,
Speaker 2: some women did this even when Vedo hadn't asked so.
Speaker 7: So for Multiply Candon multiplic Cando multiply Candle.
Speaker 3: That was multiplying and multiplying and multiplying.
Speaker 2: By connecting women directly one by one, Las Livides was
Speaker 2: recruiting volunteers and growing the network a person.
Speaker 3: There are people from those beginnings who are still at
Speaker 3: company or even started their own groups.
Speaker 2: Les Livides helped create accompaniment networks that today reached every
Speaker 2: state in Mexico. But over the years some activists criticized
Speaker 2: Veto's approach. For them, real change was changed ing the law.
Speaker 2: Veto remembers one conference where activists told her that what
Speaker 2: she was doing compromised their movement for abortion rights. They
Speaker 2: didn't want to be associated with people like her who
Speaker 2: were breaking the law.
Speaker 3: They said that what we were doing of accompanying the
Speaker 3: women and giving them the bills was risky for us,
Speaker 3: for us and for the whole movement Portos, because if
Speaker 3: they arrest you, it's like they are going to come
Speaker 3: for everyone.
Speaker 2: But Veto believed the system she'd help create was necessary
Speaker 2: and more humane than what the helplines across Latin America offered.
Speaker 2: And she actually didn't care if others were worried that
Speaker 2: her methods might damage legalization efforts.
Speaker 5: Mamselle, if we got.
Speaker 3: Down the legalization route, we'll never finish, or it will
Speaker 3: take a very long time, so we need concrete answers.
Speaker 5: Many activists in the network across Latin America found themselves
Speaker 5: on opposite sides. Some were fighting to legalize abortion. Those
Speaker 5: women were playing the long game, you might say. Others
Speaker 5: were actively breaking the law because women who needed abortions
Speaker 5: immediately couldn't wait until the law changed. But one group
Speaker 5: realized they didn't have to make a choice between the
Speaker 5: two sides. That's after the break A companiaminto with me
Speaker 5: So started in Mexico, but in Argentina women took it
Speaker 5: to the next level. Last fall, I went to a
Speaker 5: feminist gathering called an Inquentro was being held in a
Speaker 5: small Argentine city called San Salvador de Hujui near the
Speaker 5: Andes Mountains. The days of women whispering about me So
Speaker 5: in the hallways those are long gone. I've never seen
Speaker 5: so many women together here. Absolutely more than fifty thousand
Speaker 5: women flooded this town, and there was one woman you
Speaker 5: just couldn't miss. Her name is Ruth Surrichen. At the Encuentros,
Speaker 5: She's usually the person with the megaphone and seemingly endless energy.
Speaker 5: Ruth is one of the founders of the Argentinian Accompaniment
Speaker 5: network so Corista sendriv, which translates to first Responders Network.
Speaker 5: Even traveling doesn't keep her from doing accompaniamento. Ruth told
Speaker 5: me she was going to accompany three women in between
Speaker 5: her packs schedule at the Endquentron, and one of them
Speaker 5: is going to be using Miso proussel tonight at around
Speaker 5: eleven thirty pm, so I'll be there. Bruce took the
Speaker 5: accompaniamento model and scaled it. She started Socaristas and Dread
Speaker 5: in twenty twelve. It's now the biggest abortion accompaniment collective
Speaker 5: in the world. And to make that happen, she and
Speaker 5: the Socaristas decided to build systems, turning the art of
Speaker 5: accompaniamento into a science that started with a simple step,
Speaker 5: not exactly a revolutionary one.
Speaker 7: Yea Mohamunavia we said, let's make a form, yeah, amasumo,
Speaker 7: let's do a little follow up.
Speaker 5: The Socaristas survey was exhaustive, so that's amar.
Speaker 7: We were annoying, really annoying with the women.
Speaker 5: They asked straightforward questions like how many weeks pregnant were you?
Speaker 5: Did you have a successful abortions? You need to tell
Speaker 5: us because this is going to be useful for others.
Speaker 3: He important.
Speaker 5: Other questions were more personal, why did you decide to
Speaker 5: have an abortion? Does your partner know? Are you religious?
Speaker 7: And I think it's because we were conscious that we
Speaker 7: were also producing science prosamba.
Speaker 5: They tracked the data on spreadsheets, carefully documenting trends in
Speaker 5: women's experiences self managing with Miso and the Socaristas quickly
Speaker 5: noticed that a lot of women were finding them in
Speaker 5: pretty unexpected ways.
Speaker 7: Thirty percent had come to us recommended by healthcare professionals,
Speaker 7: and that's when we said, Greta, what's happening, queneson who
Speaker 7: are they?
Speaker 5: Ruth was surprised. In general, doctors in Argentina were not
Speaker 5: on board with abortion, especially when they weren't happening in
Speaker 5: hosts hospitals. So Socoristas wanted to understand why medical staff
Speaker 5: were referring patients to them a group that was working
Speaker 5: outside the medical system and the law, so they used
Speaker 5: gorilla tactics to build relationships with them. They started scheduling
Speaker 5: appointments with these doctors as if they were personal appointments,
Speaker 5: so that they could talk to them in private.
Speaker 7: Marnavin and we started creating a bond with professional medical staff,
Speaker 7: and then we started asking them, what's the problem if
Speaker 7: you write two prescriptions a month for us and nothing right?
Speaker 7: And they write us two or three prescriptions for us
Speaker 7: with different dates, and we'd get male names from friends
Speaker 7: or sons la retas and the prescriptions would be under
Speaker 7: male names.
Speaker 5: Not something socoristas do anymore. And when they did it,
Speaker 5: it was illegal. Many feminists weren't comfortable with Ruth's work.
Speaker 5: She was a little bit too radical for me. This
Speaker 5: is Mariana Romero again, she's the reproductive health researcher you
Speaker 5: heard earlier who thought to legalize abortion in Argentina.
Speaker 6: Radical how well, because they were open about having abortions
Speaker 6: at home and being with women having their abortions at home.
Speaker 5: I was like, what, just like with les levities in Mexico,
Speaker 5: Feminists in Argentina worried that Socoristas would damage their country's
Speaker 5: movement for abortion rights because it would be associated with
Speaker 5: criminal activity, but some of the doctors and nurses Agorista's
Speaker 5: scheduled appointments with were happy to help, even though they
Speaker 5: risked losing their license. I talked to a couple of them,
Speaker 5: and obgin named Gabrila Lucetti said sending patients who needed
Speaker 5: an abortion to the Sokoristas wasn't a hard choice, said demos.
Speaker 3: Do you know what we felt, Olivia, Relief, Ivase.
Speaker 6: Someone was going to do what we didn't dare to
Speaker 6: because we had a license and we were afraid of
Speaker 6: the law.
Speaker 7: Alais.
Speaker 5: A general practitioner named Naria Scharbowski told me she gladly
Speaker 5: signed the prescription every once in a while confience.
Speaker 3: I trusted them and I believed in the practice, but
Speaker 3: also to feel like I was contributing in a tiny way.
Speaker 5: A few years later, research showed that doctors had reason
Speaker 5: to trust the Sokoristas. A study published in an influential
Speaker 5: academic journal called The Lancet Global Health found that abortions
Speaker 5: with the Socoristas support were just as safe and effective
Speaker 5: as those that happened in a clinic, and then in twenty.
Speaker 1: Eighteen, Argentine lawmakers began an historic debate on legalizing abortion.
Speaker 2: More than a thousand, thirty years after feminists in Argentina
Speaker 2: started a movement to legalize abortion, the Argentina and Congress
Speaker 2: considered a law that would make abortion a right. More
Speaker 2: than seven hundred people gave speeches at the Congress, including
Speaker 2: helpline volunteers and the soaparistas. Since socaristas had been accompanying
Speaker 2: women through their abortions, they had specific stories they could share.
Speaker 2: This is a socarista reading the words of women who
Speaker 2: sought the collective's help for modios. But they came from
Speaker 2: different class backgrounds and needed abortions for different reasons. One
Speaker 2: was in college and another had lost your job. Another
Speaker 2: had recently separated from her partner.
Speaker 5: Chicos no Kiromas.
Speaker 2: Sogoristas had all these stories from the survey responses. The
Speaker 2: data they've been tracking for five years. In that time
Speaker 2: did accompanied nearly twenty thousand abortions.
Speaker 5: This data challenged beliefs that Argentinians had Sogaristas showed that
Speaker 5: the women who are most likely to have abortions were
Speaker 5: already mothers, and that many of them were religious.
Speaker 7: Here's Ruth Againita, How did so Gorristas contribute? The one
Speaker 7: thing I considered the most important is that we erased
Speaker 7: the idea of abortion as a clandestine practice. We said,
Speaker 7: people here are having abortions. You can have a safe abortion,
Speaker 7: yes see, and you can do it at home.
Speaker 5: Some of the other feminists who testified in front of Congress,
Speaker 5: like the researcher Mariana Rometo, had been critical of the Socorristas,
Speaker 5: but she and other skeptics came around.
Speaker 6: They were radical. But if they weren't, I don't know
Speaker 6: if things would have happened the way they happened.
Speaker 5: From sharing information about the pills in hallways at feminist
Speaker 5: gatherings to taking abortion out of the closet to building
Speaker 5: a whole support system for women having self managed abortions.
Speaker 5: Feminist efforts decade after decade helped change the law, and
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one, abortion became legal in Argentina. Now
Speaker 5: any woman can go to a hospital or a community
Speaker 5: clinic and ask for an abortion up to fourteen weeks
Speaker 5: planation needed, and it became common practice for doctors to
Speaker 5: prescribe miso for abortion.
Speaker 2: Argentina was just the beginning the campaign there to legalize abortion,
Speaker 2: which brought together a broad range of feminist groups inspired
Speaker 2: feminists all over Latin America. Argentinians made the green bandana
Speaker 2: the symbol for their movement, and the fight to legalize
Speaker 2: abortion across the region became known as the Green Wave,
Speaker 2: and then within a couple of years, Colombia and Mexico
Speaker 2: decriminalized abortion.
Speaker 3: Mexico's Supreme Court has declared loudly and clearly that access
Speaker 3: to abortion care is a human right.
Speaker 2: This major legal shift made news all over the world.
Speaker 8: In other words, Mexico just got its Row versus Wade today.
Speaker 2: And at the center of this whole movement was a
Speaker 2: tiny pill.
Speaker 7: Mis technology misso brussel is a technological revolution that when
Speaker 7: you put it in the hands of women and those
Speaker 7: who need an abortion, heinera is saut. It generates another revolution.
Speaker 7: It's a cultural, social, political, medical revolution.
Speaker 5: But the news up north sounded very different.
Speaker 8: Thank you for joining us on a day that changed
Speaker 8: America or outside the Supreme Court after the landmark decision
Speaker 8: that overturned Roe versus Weighed and ended a woman's constitutional
Speaker 8: right to an abortion. As you can see behind.
Speaker 5: The same year Columbia decriminalized abortion, the US was moving
Speaker 5: in the opposite direction.
Speaker 3: Are just absolutely terrified, outrage, discussed anger.
Speaker 8: They are experiencing biraling anxiety in some states, like we're
Speaker 8: talking about homicide charges.
Speaker 5: In our final episode, we follow the network to the
Speaker 5: United States. Yeah, we've certainly been called drug dealers. We've
Speaker 5: been called murderers, abortionists, you know, you name it. That's
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