Dealing with bans on abortion

NPR - Almost exactly three years ago, women in the United States lost the constitutional right to abortion. On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly half a century of federal protection and leaving abortion policy up to individual states. Since that decision, nearly 40% of states have passed laws either banning or restricting abortion, leaving large swaths of the country without access to this care.  But women are still having abortions. In fact, recent data show abortion rates across the U.S. have been rising since Roe was overturned. One of the tools that women are relying on most are abortion pills.

For the last few years, we’ve traveled across two continents to report on how women have been using these pills to safely self-manage their abortions — no doctors or clinics required. We share what we found in Embedded’s most recent series, “The Network,” a joint production with Futuro Media. This three-part documentary podcast traces the surprising history of a pill that millions have taken for abortion and follows a loose movement of activists and ordinary women across the Americas that developed ways to safely end pregnancies despite legal restrictions.  Our story starts in 1980s Brazil, where abortion was and remains illegal. We explore how women discovered that an over-the-counter medication could be repurposed for abortion. We speak to women who took these pills, doctors, and activists, all of whom saw up close how women collectively experimented on their bodies by taking the medication.  In the second part of the series, we look at how word about the pill, today known as misoprostol, spread throughout Latin America. We meet with activists in Argentina and Mexico who expanded awareness about self-managed abortion with pills and supported women through the process. Over time, their organizing contributed to sweeping policy changes that decriminalized or legalized abortion in several countries across the region. We explore this further in this long read. The series concludes in the United States, where many women are facing the kinds of abortion restrictions that had long been the norm in Latin America. We hear from doulas helping women self-manage their abortions. We also speak to activists like Elisa Wells, who co-founded and runs Plan C, an information hub where women can order abortion pills online from international organizations or even access them for free by connecting with community-based organizations. The movement is challenging a long-standing assumption in the U.S.: that abortions are only safe under a doctor or nurse’s supervision...