Abortion in the Borderlands before Roe v. Wade by Lina-Maria Murillo

Lina-Maria Murillo will present a lecture, “Abortion in the Borderlands before Roe v. Wade,” at 5 p.m. on Thursday, October 26 via Zoom. Link to join is here.

Journalists, activists, and the public at large have been transfixed by the idea that people are fleeing across the United States-Mexico border for greater access to abortion medication since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the legal decision affirming our constitutional right to abortion, in the summer of 2022. The truth is American women have availed themselves of abortion care in northern Mexico before states started clamping down on abortion access in the United States and thousands more did so in the days before Roe. In this talk we’ll discuss the long, complicated, and often racist history of abortion care in Mexico’s borderlands and how U.S. women, doctors, and activists used Mexican abortion providers for care when abortion was a crime both in the U.S. and Mexico.

Murillo is assistant professor of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies; history; and Latina/o/x studies at the University of Iowa. She is completing her first book titled “Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the U.S-Mexico Borderlands.”