AFP

A few months after they began dating, 17-year-old “M” discovered she and her 19-year-old boyfriend were pregnant.

There was never any doubt about what they needed to do: “We didn’t want a child,” she said.

With a green light for an abortion in their conservative home state of Texas unlikely, a nine-hour overnight drive to New Mexico was their only practical option.

The couple, who live in San Antonio and requested anonymity because of the political controversy surrounding the procedure, began dating just a month before Texas adopted one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the United States.

The state banned the procedure from the moment a heartbeat can be detected in the womb, or about six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

After the Supreme Court’s Friday decision striking down the nationwide right to abortion, nearly half of US states are expected to curtail access to the procedure in some form, with multitudes more women likely to make journeys similar to M’s.

– Six weeks is ‘nothing’ –

Initially, Texas’ new abortion restrictions weren’t something M gave much thought to.

“You don’t think it affects you until you’re standing in those shoes,” she said.

“Six weeks is nothing,” added L, clutching his girlfriend’s hand. “By the time you realize how late you are, it’s been almost six weeks.” 

M says she is just too young to be a mother, while her partner, who works in a convenience store, said money is the main impediment.

“I grew up in a poor home, with just my mom, I know what it’s like. I don’t want a son or daughter to go through what I went through, I want to give them better opportunities,” he said.

“In four or five years, maybe, but not now,” he added.

The couple used an online abortion finder that locates the nearest clinic depending on age, place of residence and date of last period. 

They quickly ruled out the few options in Texas. 

“We didn’t want to take the risk that the heartbeat would be detected and we would be prevented from having an abortion,” said M.

The service also suggested three clinics in Louisiana, to the east of Texas. But none had immediate openings.  

Finally it offered the Women’s Reproductive Clinic in New Mexico, a state where abortion is protected by law.

They called and got an appointment for that same Friday. But a round trip of 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) was no small thing.

The couple mapped out a plan: They would leave Thursday at 10:00 pm, when L’s shift ended and return Friday morning straight after the consultation.

“New Mexico welcomes you,” read a sky blue billboard on the side of the road as they crossed the state line.

Five minutes later they arrived at the clinic — a small brown commercial building in the town of Santa Teresa, just north of the Mexico border.

As they parked, two protestors shouted at them from the curb to reconsider. 

“They tried to come over and talk to us but it’s not their decision to make,” said L, whose leg shook non-stop in the waiting room.

– ‘A little scary’ –

M entered the office alone where an ultrasound showed she was around eight weeks pregnant — well within New Mexico’s legal limit for the pill.  

At the clinic she listened to detailed instructions and signed documents that were filed next to the image of her ultrasound in a fuchsia folder.

“You’re going to take one pill now. Tomorrow at home you are going to place another four under your upper lip,” explained the medical assistant during a fifteen minute consultation. 

“You are going to bleed and feel abdominal pain, it is normal. 

“We will call you in two days to see how you are doing.” 

In another office obstetrician Franz Theard was waiting with the single Mifepristone tablet, a medicine that blocks the production of the hormones the uterus needs to maintain the pregnancy.

He also gave her an envelope with instructions, an emergency telephone number and the four Misoprostol pills, which promote bleeding. 

“It’s a little scary,” M said as she returned to the waiting room. 

“I didn’t take my [birth control] pills properly, but now we’ve learned our lesson,” she said, squeezing her boyfriend’s arm.

“I’m not doing anything wrong, but you see people judging, they make you feel embarrassed.”  

Despite the prospect of another nine hours on the road, L said he was not tired. 

“I’m ready to go home and put this in the past.” 

Facing high medical costs and pressure to reconsider, a single mother living in California turned to activists across the border in Mexico who helped her have an abortion.

“We’re supposed to be in a free country, in a state where you can smoke marijuana, but abortion is still somewhat taboo,” the 31-year-old said, shortly before the US Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to the procedure.

The woman, of Mexican descent, believes terminating a pregnancy will now become ever harder, although the liberal West Coast states of California, Oregon and Washington jointly vowed to defend abortion rights.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn the nationwide right to abortion gives all 50 states the freedom to ban the procedure, and nearly half are expected to do so in some form.

Even before the ruling, accessing a safe abortion in the United States was already “complicated if you don’t have money,” said the mother of three, who works in a restaurant in San Diego.

She initially visited two clinics in the United States, but at both the cost of the procedure was almost $1,000, which she could not afford.

At one of the facilities, which had religious links, she was discouraged from having an abortion.

“They told me there were other options, that I could give it up for adoption. But I was determined, desperate,” she told AFP by telephone, explaining that she got pregnant because contraceptives failed.

– ‘Huge setback’ –

Through a friend, the woman learned about Colectiva Bloodys, a non-government organization in Tijuana just south of San Diego that is part of a cross-border network providing free assistance to women in the United States who cannot access an abortion.

“I was surprised that they helped me from Mexico. I thought that we were more liberal here,” she said.

“Everything moved very quickly there. In less than a day they said ‘here’s the solution,'” the woman said.

She was sent a combination of medication that ends a pregnancy by causing the uterus to contract, a method considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO), mainly for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The NGO responded quickly to any follow-up questions and “was always supportive,” she added.

Colectiva Bloodys has sent these treatments to conservative-led US states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Georgia for a few years and expects more requests following the Supreme Court ruling, said one of its members, Crystal Perez Lira.

“It’s very unfortunate, a huge setback; but we are going to have the capacity and the will” to offer support, Perez Lira said.

Mexican activists had already been surprised by the amount of interest from women in the United States in the cross-border network, launched in January in the face of obstacles to accessing a safe abortion.

“As of May, we had assisted 200 women who crossed the border and sent 1,000 sets of medicine. We didn’t expect so many,” said Veronica Cruz, founder of Las Libres, one of some 30 groups in the network.

– Financial constraints –

While the activists had expected mainly Latinas to seek their help, they have also been approached by non-Spanish speakers.

“Most turn to us for financial reasons. Over there the medication costs about $600 or they have to wait weeks to get it from organizations. We give it for free,” Cruz said.

Some of the women seeking assistance in Mexico are reluctant to go to a clinic in the United States because they lack the necessary immigration documents.

“We don’t invade their privacy. We don’t question their legal status or their nationality,” said Perez Lira.

In contrast to the US ruling, Mexico’s Supreme Court last year declared the laws criminalizing abortion unconstitutional, authorizing it de facto throughout the conservative Latin American country. 

In Mexico City, which decriminalized abortion in 2007 and provides free care regardless of place of residence, authorities pledged to support women from the United States following the court ruling.

“It’s truly regressive, sad and outrageous that in a country where these rights had been recognized they are going backwards. We’ll be ready to help,” the city’s health secretary, Oliva Lopez Arellano, told AFP.

“We have the capacity for around 25,000 legal terminations a year and now we’re at half that,” she said.

One in 10 of the 247,000 abortions carried out in the city in the past 15 years have been for migrants heading to the United States, most of them Central Americans, she added.

In addition to Mexico City, eight more of Mexico’s 32 states have decriminalized abortion.

Abortion rights supporters prepared to fan out across America Saturday for a second day of protest against the Supreme Court’s thunderbolt ruling, as state after conservative state moved swiftly to ban the procedure.

Deeply polarized America woke up to a new level of division: between states that will now or soon deny the right to abortion, enshrined for 50 years, and those that still allow it.

Dozens of new protests were planned Saturday from coast to coast, a day after demonstrations across the country that were largely peaceful — although police fired tear gas on protesters in Phoenix, Arizona and police in riot gear moved to disperse a hard core of protesters in downtown Los Angeles.

Fueling the mobilization, many fear that the Supreme Court, with a clear conservative majority made possible by Donald Trump, might now set its sights on rights like same-sex marriage and contraception.

At least eight right-leaning states imposed immediate abortion bans — with a similar number to follow suit in coming weeks — after the court eliminated constitutional protections for the procedure, drawing criticism from some of America’s closest allies around the world.

The court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision enshrining a woman’s right to an abortion, saying individual states can restrict or ban the procedure themselves.

President Joe Biden, who called the ruling a “tragic error” stemming from “extreme ideology,” spoke out again Saturday morning as he signed a gun control bill, calling the decision shocking.

“I know how painful and devastating the decision is for so many Americans,” Biden said at the White House.

Of the state laws taking effect to ban or severely restrict abortion, Biden added: “My administration is going to focus on how they’re administered and whether they violate other laws.”

On Friday Biden urged Congress to restore abortion protections as federal law, and said Roe would be “on the ballot” in November’s midterm elections.

– ‘You have failed us’ –

Hundreds of people demonstrated into the night outside the fenced-off Supreme Court on Friday — and were set to return on Saturday.

In Missouri — which immediately banned abortion, making no exception for rape or incest — protesters gathered Friday night in St. Louis at what had been the state’s last abortion clinic.

Pamela Lukehart choked back tears as she recalled how things were before abortion became a legal right.

“Women died getting abortions back then,” the 68-year-old told AFP, her voice breaking. “We were trying to protect women’s rights, women’s lives, and now they’ve taken all that away from us.”

As of Saturday morning, at least eight states had already banned abortion — Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah.

The court tossed out the legal argument in Roe v. Wade that women had the right to abortion based on the constitutional right to privacy with regard to their own bodies.

Altogether about two dozen states are now expected to severely restrict or outright ban and criminalize abortions.

Women in those states will either have to continue with their pregnancy, undergo a clandestine abortion, obtain abortion pills, or travel to another state where it remains legal.

While the ruling represents a victory in the struggle against abortion by the religious right, leaders of the largely Christian conservative movement said it does not go far enough and they will push for a nationwide ban.

Several Democratic-ruled states, anticipating an influx of patients, have already taken steps to facilitate abortion and three of them — California, Oregon and Washington — issued a joint pledge to defend access in the wake of the court’s decision.

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President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law the first significant federal bill on gun safety in decades, saying that while it falls short of what’s really needed it will “save lives.”

“While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives,” he said at the White House before leaving for two major diplomatic summits in Europe.

The gun legislation includes enhanced background checks for younger buyers and federal cash for states introducing “red flag” laws that allow courts to temporarily remove weapons from those considered a threat.

Billions of dollars have been allocated to crack down on “straw purchasers” who buy firearms for people not allowed to own them, and to curb gun trafficking.

However, much tougher measures wanted by Biden and other Democrats did not make it in, including a ban on military style rifles often used by the lone gunmen who typically carrying out mass shootings. Also absent is a longtime push for mandatory background checks on all gun purchases.

Reeling off a list of notorious mass shootings, Biden said the message from victims “was ‘do something…, for God’s sake just do something.’ Well today, we did.”

Referring to political gridlock in a near evenly divided Congress, Biden said the new law, which had rare strong support from both Republicans and Democrats, was “monumental.”

“When it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing something consequential,” he said. “I know there’s much more work to do and I’m never going to give up.”

As he inked his signature on the document, Biden added again: “God willing, this is going to save a lot of lives.”