The Network: Breaking Bread

Summary

Podcast Summary: Embedded by NPR
Episode: The Network: Breaking Bread
Release Date: June 12, 2025

---

Introduction and Background

In the second episode of NPR's Embedded series, host Kelly McEvers sets the stage by referencing the first episode, which explored the repurposing of a stomach ulcer pill for abortion purposes in Brazil. McEvers introduces the evolution of this movement beyond Brazil, highlighting the formation of a widespread network that transcends national boundaries.

“In the first episode, we traveled to Brazil to follow a discovery that a pill for stomach ulcers could be repurposed for abortion. No doctor required.” – Kelly McEvers [00:17]

The Rise and Regulation of Misoprostol (Miso)

The episode delves into the history of Cytotec (misoprostol), an ulcer medication that inadvertently became a safer alternative for abortions in Brazil during the 1980s. Initially hailed for reducing abortion-related deaths, the Brazilian government eventually banned Cytotec in the 1990s, classifying it similarly to drugs like fentanyl. This crackdown intensified legal repercussions for women seeking abortions.

“A cleaning lady has been arrested. She's suspected of having a clandestine abortion.” – Narrator [02:02]

Spreading the Knowledge: From Whisper Networks to Organized Activism

Despite governmental restrictions, knowledge about miso spread rapidly among reproductive health workers across Latin America. Activists began sharing information about obtaining and using miso through informal channels, transforming these whispers into a more organized and public movement.

“Reproductive health workers in Latin America heard about the pill when they traveled.” – Marta Martinez [02:14]

Public Stunts and the Birth of Abortion Hotlines

In a pivotal moment in Quito, Ecuador, Ecuadorian activists collaborated with the Dutch organization Women on Waves to publicly promote safe abortions. They hung a banner on the La Virgen del Panecillo statue, displaying a phone number for the first abortion hotline in Latin America. This bold action garnered immediate attention, receiving nearly 80 calls within hours.

“We are occupying the Virgin with a lot of women.” – Kelly McEvers [05:13]

Expansion to Argentina: The Helpline and the Barbie Manual

Inspired by Ecuador's success, Argentina established its own abortion hotline. Volunteers like Ana Mines from the collective Lesbians and Feminists for Abortion Decriminalization played a crucial role. They disseminated information through posters, TV appearances, and radio shows, effectively handling an overwhelming number of calls.

“The helpline was flooded with calls.” – Marta Martinez [06:31]

One year after launching, the Argentine helpline introduced the Barbie Manual, a colorful, accessible guide detailing how to self-manage an abortion using miso. The manual became a bestseller, reflecting the high demand for reliable information.

“On the back it had a picture of a Barbie and a huge rainbow. And in a fun font, it said Barbie. How'd it go? It was awesome.” – Ruth Sur Rijen [09:17]

Accompaniment Networks: Las Libres in Mexico

Veronica Cruz, known as Vero, pioneered a different approach in Mexico through her collective Las Libres. Instead of solely providing information, Las Libres offered acompañamiento—a form of support that involves accompanying women throughout the entire abortion process. This method emphasized personal support and community building.

“Las Libres is my life. Accompaniamiento is my life. I can do it 24/7.” – Ana Mines [14:59]

Vero’s approach included providing miso for free to those who couldn't afford it and establishing direct connections between women who had undergone abortions and those seeking them.

“I told them, the next woman who comes, you are going to give her the pills as a gift, and you are going to tell her about your experience.” – Ana Mines [19:42]

Building Relationships with Healthcare Professionals in Argentina

In Argentina, Socorristas Senred, led by Ruth Sur Rijen, expanded the accompaniment model into a structured network. They meticulously collected data through surveys, tracking trends and ensuring the safety and effectiveness of self-managed abortions. This scientific approach lent credibility to their efforts.

“We are conscious that we were also producing science.” – Victoria Estrada [26:06]

To bolster their network, Socorristas Senred built clandestine relationships with healthcare professionals, securing discreet prescriptions for miso under male aliases to circumvent legal restrictions.

“We started creating a bond with professional medical staff. And then we started asking them, what's the problem if you write two prescriptions a month for us.” – Victoria Estrada [27:19]

Impact and Legalization

The comprehensive data collected by the socorristas undermined prevalent misconceptions about abortion, highlighting that many women seeking abortions were already mothers and held diverse backgrounds and beliefs. This evidence was instrumental during Argentina’s historic 2018 congressional debate on legalizing abortion.

“They said, if we weren't radical, I don't know if things would have happened the way they happened.” – Victoria Estrada [31:56]

In 2021, Argentina legalized abortion up to 14 weeks, making it accessible without cost and allowing doctors to prescribe miso legally. This victory inspired a broader Green Wave movement across Latin America, leading to the decriminalization of abortion in Colombia and Mexico.

“Miso prostol is a technological revolution that when you put it in the hands of women and those who need an abortion, it generates another revolution.” – Victoria Estrada [33:59]

Contrasting Developments in the United States

While Latin America made significant strides toward abortion rights, the United States experienced a regression with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. This dichotomy underscored the global variability in reproductive rights progress.

“Mexico's Supreme Court has declared loudly and clearly that access to abortion care is a human right. In other words, Mexico just got its Roe versus Wade today.” – Kelly McEvers [33:34]

“As you can see behind, the same year Colombia decriminalized abortion, the US was moving in the opposite direction.” – Marta Martinez [34:07]

Conclusion and Upcoming Content

The episode concludes by highlighting the ongoing struggles and differing approaches within the abortion rights movement. While some advocate for legal reform, others prioritize immediate, tangible support and resources for women. The final teaser hints at exploring the network's efforts in the United States in the forthcoming episode.

“We’ve been called murderers, abortionists, you know, you name it. That's next time on The Network.” – Marta Martinez [35:10]

---

Key Takeaways:

• Misoprostol (Miso) played a pivotal role in making abortions safer and more accessible in Latin America.
• Public activism, such as the Ecuadorian banner stunt, catalyzed the formation of robust support networks.
• Helplines and manuals like the Barbie Manual provided essential information, empowering thousands of women.
• Accompaniment networks like Las Libres in Mexico emphasized personal support, leading to widespread community-based support systems.
• Data-driven advocacy in Argentina demonstrated the safety and prevalence of self-managed abortions, contributing to the legalization of abortion in 2021.
• The Green Wave movement inspired broader regional changes, contrasting sharply with the U.S. rollback of abortion rights.

This episode of Embedded offers a comprehensive look into the grassroots movements that transformed abortion access in Latin America, showcasing the power of community, information dissemination, and strategic activism.

Transcript

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the name your price tool. It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match, limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Kelly McEvers]

Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is the second episode of the network. If you haven't listened to the first episode, go back and start there. In the first episode, we traveled to Brazil to follow a discovery that a pill for stomach ulcers could be repurposed for abortion. No doctor required. Soon after that, a network started to form in Brazil, a whisper network, really, where women were telling each other about these pills, passing on info person to person about where to get the pills and how to use them. In this episode, our hosts, Victoria Estrada and Marta Martinez take us to a new era of the network when it moves way beyond Whispers and beyond Brazil. Here's Victoria and Marta Saint Othec.

[Narrator]

That was the name that some Brazilian doctors started calling Cytotec in the 1980s because far fewer women were dying from abortion complications thanks to this ulcer pill. But not everyone was ready to canonize it. During the 90s, the Brazilian government cracked down on Cytotec, the commercial name of misoprostol, or miso for short. Eventually, the government banned the medication and labeled it a controlled substance, which meant miso had restrictions similar to what dangerous drugs like fentanyl now have. And conditions got harsh for women who had abortions. The government targeted them more and more, arrested them on charges of distributing miso and what prosecutors called self induced abortion. A cleaning lady has been arrested. She's suspected of having a clandestine abortion.

[Marta Martinez]

But despite official attempts to control miso, the secret was out. Reproductive health workers in Latin America heard about the pill when they traveled.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

Some people got some from Colombia, and.

[Narrator]

Then some people got some from Brazil.

[Marta Martinez]

From a Peruvian city in the Amazon jungle.

[Victoria Estrada]

And she said, here we use a pill.

[Marta Martinez]

And I said, what pill is that? To huge feminist gatherings across Latin America called Encuentros, where women chatted about it in the hallways.

[Victoria Estrada]

We were in a group talking, and.

[Ana Mines]

They said, look.

[Victoria Estrada]

We'Ve been using Cytotec and it's working well.

[Marta Martinez]

Court of Appeal was moving out of Brazil to countries where abortion was also mostly banned and deeply stigmatized.

[Narrator]

And so we were just like, well.

[Victoria Estrada]

How do we use this?

[Narrator]

Activists who were getting their hands on miso saw its potential widespread access to safe abortions. But to make that happen, they needed to get organized, which sparked a whole new set of questions.

[Marta Martinez]

How could they talk about something that had been almost unspeakable? And even if they did, was talking enough? This episode, we're going to Ecuador, Argentina and Mexico. All places where the women who make up this diffuse network took on these questions, teaming up, challenging each other, sometimes even breaking the law to change it. I'm Marta Martinez. I'm Victoria Estrada and this is the Network. A series about the DIY method that took safe abortions out of the clinic and the women who made it happen.

[Narrator]

Episode 2 Breaking Bread the activists in Latin America who knew about Miso had a problem. Abortion was highly criminalized. It was stigmatized. How could they get women access to something illegal, something that was shrouded in shame?

[Marta Martinez]

The obvious option was to keep the conversation and their actions hidden, whispering sister to sister. And that's basically what happened for more than a decade.

[Narrator]

But in 2008, activists in Latin America took a totally different tack. In the middle of Quito, Ecuador, there's a statue of a virgin, La Virgen del Panecillo. She's slightly taller than Rio de Janeiro's famous Christ the Redeemer. She has wings spread out like an angel. One day, a group of women decided to pull a stunt. They were a mix of Ecuadorian activists and activists from Women on Waves, an abortion access organization based in the Netherlands. They plotted how to get to the statue's balcony without attracting attention. There are two guards there, so we need some beautiful blondes to distract them. A 2014 documentary called Vessel recorded their efforts.

[Kelly McEvers]

We are occupying the Virgin with a lot of women.

[Narrator]

They hung a big white banner on the balcony of the virgin statue. The banner said safe abortion with a phone number. That number was for the first abortion hotline in Latin America. The documentary shows them getting nearly 80 calls within the first few hours.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

Hello.

[Narrator]

This idea for a hotline and the stunt promoting it threw the Latin American network into a new, more public era. They reached thousands of women this way. Their work was bold, it was organized, and maybe most importantly, it was replicable. Women in other countries had been watching what happened in Ecuador, and a year.

[Marta Martinez]

Later, Argentina started its own hotline.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

In the beginning, the hotline was so bare bones. We had a small backpack with the Nokia 1100, a notebook, some flashcards, and a process we had built rigorously.

[Marta Martinez]

This is Ana Mines, one of the first volunteers of the Argentinian helpline. She was part of the collective Lesbians and Feminists for Abortion Decriminalization. She and I talked in her living room in Buenos Aires with her cat sitting on her lap. She told me that when they started the Helpline in the summer of 2009, they were just a dozen volunteers. They didn't climb a statue. Instead, they put up posters and stickers all over Buenos Aires. They were on tv, where they shared their phone number. And they had a weekly radio show on the channel Agencia Paco Urondo. Pretty soon, the helpline was flooded with calls.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

The demand was for more. It was always for a lot more.

[Marta Martinez]

Volunteers gave callers, step by step, information on how to self manage an abortion.

[Narrator]

With miso in Argentina. No one had ever done what this collective was doing, speaking so openly about abortions and how to do it on your own. Not everyone was happy about it.

[Victoria Estrada]

I said, do we have to do this so public? You are nuts.

[Narrator]

This is Mariana Romero, the executive director of cedes, the center for State and Society Studies. She's a prominent reproductive health researcher and advocate for abortion rights in Argentina. Mariana and other feminists worried that the helpline could inadvertently reduce access to miso.

[Victoria Estrada]

You are going to make the pharmaceutical company that produced misoprostol take it out of the market.

[Narrator]

That wasn't the only risk of their work. The helpline was operating in uncharted territory. Since abortion was mostly banned, the volunteers worried any work they did on abortion could put them or the women they helped in jail. But as the years passed, no helpline volunteers were ever arrested.

[Marta Martinez]

And so they got more provocative with the way they talked about abortion. A year after launching the helpline, the they printed a manual explaining how to self manage an abortion by taking miso without a doctor. It's thorough, more than 100 pages long. The COVID is all pink with two big rainbows and a bunch of bills with smiley faces. And on the back.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

On the back it had a picture of a Barbie and a huge rainbow.

[Marta Martinez]

She's in a pink convertible with sunglasses and a glamorous scarf over her head.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

And in a fun font, it said Barbie. How'd it go? It was awesome.

[Narrator]

Barbie said.

[Marta Martinez]

Ana says women were hungry for this information.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

It was a bestseller. I had two printings of 10,000 copies each.

[Marta Martinez]

Ana, like a lot of the early helpline volunteers, is a lesbian. She saw echoes of her own experience in the shame and stigma that women faced when they wanted an abortion. She says the helpline and the manual were driven by a lesbian philosophy.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

Refusing to be in the closet, no stigma of getting out there and saying, yes, we're here.

[Marta Martinez]

Being public was one pillar of the helpline strategy. The other was relying on science. Both the manual and the script that the helpline volunteers used were based on scientific research.

[Narrator]

Starting in the 90s, researchers from around the world had taken an interest in what Latin American activists had been doing. They ran studies on women taking miso to end their pregnancies in places all over the globe, from Africa to Southeast Asia. Sometimes researchers worked in partnership with the activists. Over and over, they found that using miso in this way was safe and effective, and they developed best practices for it. Their research led the World Health Organization to add miso to its essential medicines list in 2005. Helpline volunteers cited this body of research on their calls, and it gave them credibility. By the 2010s, the helpline and the manual were disseminating all that scientific information to tens of thousands of women in Argentina.

[Marta Martinez]

Ana herself was able to help thousands of women through the helpline. But sometimes as she spoke to women, Ana wanted to stay in touch.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

If a specific story affected me and made me anxious and I wanted to stay involved, a colleague would say, no, it's not your role. We didn't have the capacity. And in political terms that wasn't our project.

[Narrator]

But other activists were concerned. They were aware of all the hype around abortion helplines, but skeptical about the approach.

[Victoria Estrada]

Como estan seguras que sas mujeres no estan Enris Gordon how do you know.

[Ana Mines]

For sure that those women are not at risk? You gave them information and then what? Did she get the pills or didn't she? Did she end up in the hospital? Did she do something wrong? You actually don't know anything.

[Narrator]

This is Veronica Cruz who goes by Vero. She's an activist in Mexico doing something completely different than the helplines, something that would push the envelope much further. After the break, we follow Vero to Mexico.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

This message comes from Thuma. Create your oasis with Thuma, a modern design company that specializes in furniture and home goods. By stripping away everything but the essential. Thuma makes elevated beds with premium materials and intentional details with clean lines, subtle curves and minimalist style. The Thuma bed collection is available in four signature finishes to match any design aesthetic. To get $100 towards your first bed purchase, go to T. Huma Co NPR.

[Veronica Cruz]

This message comes from Bluehost. Bluehost can make building a great website easy and offers a 30 day money back guarantee. Customize and launch your site in minutes with AI, then optimize with built in search engine tools. Get your great [e-mail] support for this.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

Podcast and the following message come from Made in Cookware President and co founder Jake Kalik shares a tool that's useful for both master and newbie griller.

[Veronica Cruz]

The craftsmanship of the carbon steel griddle.

[Narrator]

Enhances your grilling experience because it allows.

[Veronica Cruz]

You a totally different type of grill.

[Narrator]

Surface that opens up the amounts of food you're able to cook. So the griddle is the perfect accessory to add to your grill and kind of widen your grilling game.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

Learn more about Made in Cookware at M A D e I n cookware.com.

[Veronica Cruz]

This message comes from Instacart Instacart is on a mission to have you not leave the couch this basketball season. Between the pre game rituals and the post game interviews, it can be difficult to find time for everything else. Let Instacart take care of your game day snacks or weekly restocks and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes because they hear it's bad luck to be hungry on game day. Download the Instacart app today and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees apply for three orders in 14 days. Excludes restaurants.

[Marta Martinez]

The helplines, the Barbie manual. All of it was aimed at spreading the word about miso and changing how people were talking about abortion.

[Narrator]

But Veronica, who you heard before the break and who goes Viro, didn't think spreading information was enough. She used a different strategy in the feminist collective she started in Mexico. The collective is called Las Libres, which means the free.

[Victoria Estrada]

Las libres es mi vid de la compano, es mi vida a lo puedo a serve.

[Ana Mines]

Las Libres is my life. Accompaniamiento is my life. I can do it 247 accompaniamento.

[Narrator]

That's the name of her approach.

[Marta Martinez]

Usually people translate accompaniamiento as accompaniment. It's not a word you use in English very often, but in Spanish you hear it all the time. It can mean being with someone but also supporting them or just keeping them company.

[Narrator]

I love the root of the word, which comes from Latin, companis. It means the people you break bread with, your companions, the people you trust.

[Marta Martinez]

And for abortion, it's come to mean being there during the whole process, from beginning to end, regardless of the legal risks.

[Narrator]

Based on our reporting, Vero's collective, Las Libres, was the first group in Latin America and possibly the world, to start doing a companamiento with miso. I visited Vero last fall at the Las Libres office in Guanajuato, a city in central Mexico. Wow. Stamo bin la vista. Their office is more homey than corporate. It's in a three story house that's Nestled into the hills, Vero founded Las Sivres nearly a decade before any of the helplines started. At the time, abortion in Mexico was essentially banned in the state where Vero lives, the only exception was for women who were raped. But even in those cases, hospitals often denied women their right to the procedure. So Vera was working with a gynecologist to help women who'd been raped get legal abortions. And in 2000, this doctor, like a growing number of doctors around the world, started to use miso for abortions. Vera remembers the first time she saw the doctor give a woman miso.

[Ana Mines]

I was like, what? No way.

[Narrator]

It was nothing like a surgical abortion. And Vero had a realization.

[Victoria Estrada]

I mean, I can do it compra las pastillas.

[Ana Mines]

I can just buy the pills, tell the woman how to use them. That was like an incredible discovery for me.

[Narrator]

Not long after, a woman came to the Las Libres office.

[Ana Mines]

She told me, I'm not a rape victim, but I also want to interrupt, interrupt her pregnancy.

[Narrator]

This woman didn't qualify for legal abortion in Mexico because she wasn't a rape survivor. So Vero didn't send her to the doctor.

[Ana Mines]

I said, we don't have to tell anyone if she was or wasn't a rape victim, that it's going to stay here between us.

[Narrator]

Vero decided to accompany the woman through the whole process. Even though it was risky. Where Vero lived, any method of ending a pregnancy that wasn't a result of rape carried a prison sentence for the woman and anyone who helped her. But unlike in Brazil, in Mexico, miso was easy to get. Even though you technically needed a prescription, you could often get it over the counter. So Vero told the woman to just go buy the pills, and she did. She got the miso and went home.

[Victoria Estrada]

Siempresta vayo monitoriando.

[Narrator]

I was always monitoring her for any complications. Even though Vero had seen how the pills work, how easy it was to use them, she says it was nerve wracking to support someone through an abortion without a doctor.

[Ana Mines]

So I slept with my cell phone on my chest all the time, like, in case it rang or something.

[Narrator]

The next day, the woman went to a doctor who confirmed her pregnancy had ended with without any complications. Vero's first time doing accompaniamiento had gone smoothly after that. When someone contacted Las Libres for an abortion, and they were not rape survivors. Las Libres didn't send her to the gynecologist they'd been working with. They handled it themselves.

[Victoria Estrada]

Nos prometimos a nosotras mismas que.

[Ana Mines]

We promised ourselves that we were never going to leave anyone without access, whatever we had to do.

[Narrator]

If a woman couldn't afford to buy miso, which was expensive in Mexico, Las Libres would give her the pills for free. If a woman could afford miso, sometimes she had leftover pills. Vero suggested what to do with them.

[Ana Mines]

I told them, the next woman who comes, you are going to give her the pills as a gift, and you are going to tell her about your experience.

[Narrator]

Vero would set up a meeting between the two women in a park or at a mall. The woman who'd had an abortion would share her leftover pills and her story. Eventually, some women did this, even when Vero hadn't asked.

[Ana Mines]

That was multiplying and multiplying and multiplying.

[Narrator]

By connecting women directly, one by one, Las Libres was recruiting volunteers and growing the network.

[Ana Mines]

There are people from those beginnings who are still accompanying or even started their own groups.

[Narrator]

Las Libres helped create accompaniment networks that today reach every state in Mexico. But over the years, some activists criticized Vero's approach. For them, real change was changing the law. Vero remembers one conference where activists told her that what she was doing compromised their movement for abortion rights. They didn't want to be associated with people like her who were breaking the law.

[Ana Mines]

They said that what we were doing of accompanying the women and giving them the pills was risky for us.

[Victoria Estrada]

For.

[Ana Mines]

Us and for the whole movement, because if they arrest you, it's like they are going to come for everyone.

[Narrator]

But Vero believed the system she'd helped create was necessary and more humane than what the helplines across Latin America offered. And she actually didn't care if others were worried that her methods might damage legalization efforts.

[Victoria Estrada]

Si nos vamos a la legalizacion. No vamos a cabarnunca.

[Ana Mines]

If we go down the legalization route, we'll never finish or it will take a very long time. So we need concrete answers.

[Marta Martinez]

Many activists in the network across Latin America found themselves on opposite sides. Some were fighting to legalize abortion. Those women were playing the long game, you might say. Others were actively breaking the law because women who needed abortions immediately couldn't wait until the law changed. But one group realized they didn't have to make a choice between the two sides. That's after the break.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

This message comes from Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. Support for NPR's Climate Solutions Week, Rethinking Home comes from the Nature Conservancy. People from all walks of life depend on nature for the food they eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe for strengthening their communities, powering their livelihoods and safeguarding their health. Nature is common ground for everyone, and uniting to protect nature can help solve today's challenges and create a thriving tomorrow for future generations. Discover [e-mail] NPR this message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker? It's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your [e-mail] or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country.

[Marta Martinez]

Accompanimento with Miso started in Mexico, but in Argentina, women took it to the next level. Last fall, I went to a feminist gathering called an Encuentron. It was being held in a small Argentine city called San Salvador de Jujuy, near the Andes Mountains. The days of women whispering about miso in the hallways, those are long gone. I've never seen so many women together here.

[Narrator]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Marta Martinez]

More than 50,000 women flooded this town. And there was one woman you just couldn't miss. Her name is Ruth Sur Rijen. At Dien Cuentros, she's usually the person with the megaphone and seemingly endless energy. Ruth is one of the founders of the Argentinian accompaniment network Socorista Senred, which translates to first responders network. Even traveling doesn't keep her from doing a companamiento. Ruth told me she was going to accompany three women in between her packed schedule at the Encuentro.

[Victoria Estrada]

And one of them is going to be using misoprostol tonight at around 11:30pm so I'll be there.

[Marta Martinez]

Ruth took the Accompaniamiento model and scaled it. She started socoristas enred in 2012. It's now the biggest abortion accompaniment collective in the world. And to make that happen, she and the Socorristas decided to build systems turning the art of a companamiento into a science that started with a simple step, not exactly a revolutionary one.

[Victoria Estrada]

We said, let's make a formento. Let's do a little follow up.

[Marta Martinez]

The Socorrista survey was exhaustive.

[Victoria Estrada]

We were annoying, really annoying, with the women.

[Marta Martinez]

They asked straightforward questions like how many weeks pregnant were you? Did you have a successful abortion?

[Victoria Estrada]

You need to tell us because this is gonna be useful for others.

[Ana Mines]

E importante.

[Marta Martinez]

Other questions were more personal. Why did you decide to have an abortion? Does your partner know? Are you religious?

[Victoria Estrada]

And I think it's because we were conscious that we were also producing science.

[Marta Martinez]

They tracked the data on spreadsheets, carefully documenting trends in women's experiences. Self managing with miso. And the socorristas quickly noticed that a lot of women were finding them in pretty unexpected ways.

[Victoria Estrada]

30% had come to us recommended by healthcare professionals. And that's when we said, what's happening? Quiene son? Who are they?

[Marta Martinez]

Ruth was surprised. In general, doctors in Argentina were not on board with abortion, especially when they weren't happening in hospitals. Dosocoristas wanted to understand why medical staff were referring patients to them, a group that was working outside the medical system and the law. So they used guerrilla tactics to build relationships with them. They started scheduling appointments with these doctors as if they were personal appointments so that they could talk to them in private.

[Victoria Estrada]

And we started creating a bond with professional medical staff. And then we started asking them, what's the problem if you write two prescriptions a month for us, Nothing, right? And they write us two or three prescriptions for us with different dates. And we'd get male names from friends or sons, and the prescriptions would be under male names.

[Marta Martinez]

This is not something socorristas do anymore. And when they did it, it was illegal. Many feminists weren't comfortable with Ruth's work.

[Victoria Estrada]

She was a little bit too radical for me.

[Marta Martinez]

This is Mariana Romero again. She's the reproductive health researcher you heard earlier who fought to legalize abortion in Argentina. Radical how?

[Victoria Estrada]

Well, because they were open about having abortions at home and being with women having their abortions at home, I was like, what?

[Marta Martinez]

Just like with Las libres in Mexico. Feminists in Argentina worried that socorristas would damage their country's movement for abortion rights because it would be associated with criminal activity. But some of the doctors and nurses socorristas scheduled appointments with were happy to help, even though they risked losing their license. I talked to a couple of them. An obgyn named Gabriela Lucetti said sending patients who needed an abortion to the socorristas wasn't a hard choice.

[Victoria Estrada]

Do you know what we felt? Relief. Someone was going to do what we didn't dare to because we had a license and we were afraid of the law.

[Marta Martinez]

A general practitioner named Nadia Shcherboski told me she gladly signed a prescription every once in a while.

[Ana Mines]

I trusted them and I believed in the practice.

[Narrator]

But Also to feel like I was contributing in a tiny way.

[Marta Martinez]

A few years later, research showed that doctors had reason to trust the socorristas. A study published in an influential academic journal called the Lancet Global Health found that abortions with a socorrista's support were just as safe and effective as those that happened in a clinic.

[Narrator]

And then, in 2018, Argentine lawmakers began.

[Veronica Cruz]

An historic debate on legalizing abortion.

[Narrator]

Thirty years after feminists in Argentina started a movement to legalize abortion, the Argentinian Congress considered a law that would make abortion a right. More than 700 people gave speeches at the congress, including helpline volunteers and the socorristas. Since socorristas had been accompanying women through their abortions, they had specific stories they could share. This is a socorrista reading the words of women who'd sought the collective's help. They came from different class backgrounds and needed abortions for different reasons. One was in college. Another had lost her job. Another had recently separated from her partner. The socorristas had all these stories from the survey responses, the data they'd been tracking for five years. In that time, they'd accompanied nearly 20,000 abortions.

[Marta Martinez]

This data challenged beliefs that Argentinians had. Socorristas showed that the women who are most likely to have abortions were already mothers and that many of them were religious. Here's Ruth again.

[Victoria Estrada]

How did socorristas contribute? The one thing I consider the most important is that we erased the idea of abortion as a clandestine practice. We said, people here are having abortions. You can have a safe abortion. Yes, si se poida hortaren cas, and you can do it at home.

[Marta Martinez]

Some of the other feminists who testified in front of Congress, like the researcher Mariana Romero, had been critical of the socorristas. But she and other skeptics came around.

[Victoria Estrada]

They were radical, but if they weren't, I don't know if things would have happened the way they happened.

[Marta Martinez]

From sharing information about the pills in hallways at feminist gatherings, to taking abortion out of the closet, to building a whole support system for women having self managed abortions, Feminist efforts, decade after decade helped change the law. And in 2021, abortion became legal in Argentina. Now any woman can go to a hospital or a community clinic and ask for an abortion up to 14 weeks, no expense needed. And it became common practice for doctors to prescribe miso for abortion.

[Narrator]

Argentina was just the beginning. The campaign there to legalize abortion, which brought together a broad range of feminist groups, inspired feminists all over Latin America. Argentinians made the green bandana the symbol for their movement. And the fight to legalize abortion across the region became known as the Green wave. And then within a couple of years, Colombia and Mexico decriminalized abortion.

[Kelly McEvers]

Mexico's Supreme Court has declared loudly and clearly that access to abortion care is a human right.

[Narrator]

This major legal shift made news of all over the world.

[Kelly McEvers]

In other words, Mexico just got its Roe versus Wade today.

[Narrator]

And at the center of this whole movement was a tiny pill.

[Victoria Estrada]

Miso prostol is a technological revolution that when you put it in the hands of women and those who need an abortion, it generates another revolution. It's a cultural, social, political, medical revolution.

[Marta Martinez]

But the news up north sounded very different.

[Kelly McEvers]

Thank you for joining us on a day that changed America. We're outside the Supreme Court after the landmark decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a white woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

[Marta Martinez]

As you can see behind, the same year Colombia decriminalized abortion, the US Was moving in the opposite direction.

[Ruth Sur Rijen]

My body, my toy, my body.

[Ana Mines]

People are just absolutely terrified.

[Victoria Estrada]

Outrage, disgust, anger.

[Ana Mines]

They are experiencing spiraling anxiety in some seats.

[Kelly McEvers]

We're talking about homicide charges.

[Marta Martinez]

In our final episode, we follow the network to the United States.

[Narrator]

Yeah, we've certainly been called drug dealers.

[Marta Martinez]

We'Ve been called murderers, abortionists, you know, you name it. That's next time on the network. All episodes of the network are available right now.

[Narrator]

If you want more about the network, like photos from Marta's trip to Argentina, go to npr.org embeddednetwork that's npr.org embeddednetwork.

[Marta Martinez]

The network from Embedded is a collaboration with Latinousa, a production of Futuro Media.

[Narrator]

This episode was produced by Adelina Lancianniz, Ariana Garibli, Monica Morales Garcia and Abby Wendell. Raina Cohen edited the series fact checking.

[Marta Martinez]

By Cecile Davis Vazquez and Nicolette Kahn. Robert Rodriguez mastered the episode.

[Narrator]

Liana Simstrom is our supervising senior producer. Katie Simon is our supervising senior editor. Irina Gucci is our executive producer, and Colin Campbell is the senior vice president for podcasting at npr.

[Marta Martinez]

The Embedded team also includes Luis Reyes and Dan Girma from Latino usa.

[Narrator]

Our executive producers are Marlon Bishop and Peter Peniley Ramirez. And our production managers are Jessica Ellis and Nancy Trujillo.

[Marta Martinez]

Thanks to our managing editor of Standards and Practices, Tony Cavin, and to Johannes Durgi and Micah Radner for legal support and Tommy Evans, NPR's managing editor. Editorial Review Our visuals editor is Emily Bogle. Original tile art by Luke Medina.

[Narrator]

Voiceovers by Alejandra Marquez Hansen, Laura Sotobarra, Maria Vazquez, Rosa Montes, Monica Morales Garcia, Gabriela, Simon Seregido and Andrea de Alva Alvarez.

[Marta Martinez]

Special thanks to Dee Redwine, Susanna Chavez, Alicia Cacopardo, Giselle Carino, Mabel Bianco, Julia McReynolds Perez, Alisa Nadworny, Selena Simmons Duffin and Kiara Eisner.

[Narrator]

Archival footage from Urine Use Vessel Agencia pacurondo and the YouTube channel for the National Campaign for Safe, Legal and Free Abortions in Argentina. And a big thanks to our Embedded plus supporters.

[Marta Martinez]

Funding for this series provided in part by the Levi Strauss foundation, outfitting movements and leaders fighting for a more just and abundant world, and the International Women's Media foundation as part of its Reproductive Health Rights and Justice in the Americas initiative. I'm Marta Martinez.

[Narrator]

I'm Victoria Estrada.

[Marta Martinez]

This is Embedded from npr.

[Narrator]

Thanks for listening.

[Marta Martinez]

Muchas gracias for Escucar.

[Veronica Cruz]

This message comes from NOCD have you ever had an unwanted thought that gets stuck in your head? It could be ocd. OCD can cause distress in all areas of life, from relationships to how you view yourself, but it's also highly treatable. NOCD's licensed therapists are specially trained in identifying and treating OCD. If you think you're struggling with OCD, visit nocd.com to schedule a free 15 minute call.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

That's nocd.com this message comes from NPR sponsor Viori featuring the performance jogger. Visit viori.com NPR for 20% off your first purchase on any US orders over $75 and free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. This message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less and all Plans include high speed data, unlimited talk and text and nationwide coverage. See for [e-mail] Switch.