Although American and Mexican women have long relied on one another for abortion care, the impending restrictions in Arizona are set to create a regional lack of access that spans into the neighboring Mexican state of Sonora — where abortion is also banned with minimal exceptions.
Such stringent abortion restrictions have left organizers scrambling to support women seeking care on both sides of the border.
“Before, those who had the financial opportunity did not hesitate to go to the United States to have the care that is required,” Ochoa said. “Now, we have more demand for assistance from the United States.”
“Because we are on the border with the United States, what happens there affects us,” said Leticia Burgos Ochoa, an abortion rights activist and former Mexican senator based in Sonora.
For women in Sonora seeking safe, legal abortions, going to Arizona was already part of a limited set of options, Ochoa said.
“Before, those who had the financial opportunity did not hesitate to go to the United States to have the care that is required,” Ochoa said. “Now, we have more demand for assistance from the United States.”
Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled last week that an 1864 law banning most abortions from the moment of conception could be enforced, creating chaos that will force women who need abortions to look elsewhere.
“I would go to a different state,” a Phoenix woman told NBC News outside an abortion clinic days after the ruling. “There’s a way around this, but they’re making it hard. If you can’t go here, go to California or Mexico, go somewhere.”
Once Arizona’s law takes effect, abortion will be banned along the majority of the U.S.-Mexico border. Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas — four of the six Mexican states that make up their share of the border — also severely restrict the procedure, expanding an “abortion desert” that would span thousands of thousands in a remote and politicized region.
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