Morras help member Morras explained that at the beginning of the collective, they only gave information to women from feminist circles, “to the girlfriend of a friend of a friend,” but from a donation from Fondo Semilla, they were legally constituted and now have RFC, legal responsibilities and receive donations that they use to visit phone lines and generate information material. Until a few years ago, four women were imprisoned in Guanajuato for the crime of murder by kinship attributed to women who had an abortion, even if they were spontaneous. From October 2019 to August 2021, 50 legal abortions were performed in Oaxaca: zero in the year of decriminalization, 16 in 2020 and 34 in 2021. This is clear from the information provided by the Oaxaca Health Services in response to the request for information submitted by Serendipia with folio number 00641721. In 2020, there were 11,269 legal abortions in Mexico City, the lowest record since 2016. This year, there were 16 legal abortions in Oaxaca, where they increased to 34 in 2021. She explains that if women have information and medication, they can have safe abortions. If they have resources and health workers with adequate health facilities and appropriate and sterilized instruments, they will also have safe abortions. In Mexico City, it has been legal to terminate a pregnancy before the 12th week of pregnancy, for any reason since 2007. The same government offers this service through 14 hospitals, clinics and health centers of the SSa. 79,383 legal abortions were performed in these places between 2016 and 2020, according to open data from Mexico City`s Ministry of Health. During this period, abortions were performed using three methods: the use of drugs that account for 89.04% of abortions, debutérination, which accounts for 10.95% of the ILE, and curettage, which accounts for 0.005% of abortions. There is a typo in the percentage of abortions performed with medication, said 98.04 and should say 89.04 Mexico City`s Minister of Health, Oliva López Arellano, reported that there had been 227,686 legal abortions in the past 13 years, adding that there had been deaths of women in none of them.
The short answer to the question of how many women abort in the country is that we don`t know for sure because much of the information doesn`t exist or is not made public (although the titanic efforts of organizations like IWRM to demand, collect, and publish much of that information are appreciated). What would it take to get a complete picture of abortion in the country? Undoubtedly, the data of the procedures that take place in public hospitals, but also on abortions performed at home, clandestine abortions and also those performed in hospitals and private clinics. So it will be an incomplete story. Here`s how Dr. Fátima Juárez in a study by the Guttmacher Institute, cited by the medical director of Marie Stopes Mexico and the executive director of Fondo María, organizations that are committed to facilitating women`s access to legal abortion (ILE) in Mexico City and other cities around the world. Oriana López, director of Libra, the organization that founded the Maria Fund, admits in an interview with mexico.com that this number is an under-record, but describes that it is a reliable estimate because it is based on parameters for which there are official figures. “The WHO Protocol on Abortion is a common good because it is information, women have the right to information based on scientific progress; What we`re doing is spreading that information so they can do it safely,” concludes the morras member who helps Morras. Official data also suggests that since 2016, fewer legal abortions have been performed in SSa medical units each year. This year there were 18,000,86 abortions, in 2017 there were 17,000,598 abortions, in 2018 there were 17,000,179 abortions, in 2019 the number fell to 15,000,251, and in 2020 there are 11,000,269 legal abortions. “Clandestine abortions performed by women who have resources of all kinds: call them education, money, contacts, they will have safe abortions, even if they are secret,” she says.
It is important to emphasize that the information on women who have had an abortion at ENDIREH relates to the last 5 years, so the survey says little about the age of women when they became pregnant or had an abortion. However, the other important source of information on abortions performed at the national level, the records of hospital discharges from units of the Ministry of Health, is more precise on this point. The latest public version of this database shows hospital discharges that took place in 2014. Access to abortion is a privilege in the country, not only because legal bases are systematically ignored and hindered by states, violating women`s rights to access safe abortion, but also because of the simple and simple economic costs associated with paying for an abortion. So who is enough to have an abortion? Although no one can give an exact figure, it is estimated that between 750,000 and one million clandestine abortions are performed each year in Mexico.