New Podcast details rise of Latin America’s Underground Abortion Networks
Long before abortion pills gained global recognition, women in Latin America built grassroots networks to make abortion safer and more accessible.
For more than two years, Victoria Estrada and Marta Martinez immersed themselves in uncovering the complex, often untold history of abortion access in Latin America.
Their podcast series, The Network, produced by NPR’s Embedded and Futuro Media, traces the evolution of self-managed abortion in the region, highlighting how grassroots movements transformed abortion care long before some of these practices gained formal medical endorsement.
“It’s all mostly scattered, and there's not a lot of documentation, and so you have all these different pieces here and there, and it was kind of like putting the puzzle together,” Martinez said.
The reporting was sparked by the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, a decision that prompted the two journalists to look south for a broader understanding of reproductive care. Estrada and Martinez noticed that the strategies and realities surrounding abortion in the region were largely unknown to U.S. audiences.
The first episode of "The Network" series explores the rise of women's networks across the Americas that facilitate safe, self-managed abortions. The series follows the story of women in Brazil who, in the late 1980s, discovered the drug Cytotec (misoprostol) as an effective and safe method for self-induced abortions.
In episode two of "The Network," they explore the spread of misoprostol, a drug used for safe abortions, across Latin America. The episode details how Brazilian women discovered misoprostol, leading to a network of activists who shared information despite government bans. The story shifts to Ecuador, where activists launched a hotline for safe abortions, inspiring similar efforts in Argentina.
The final episode of "The Network" explores the rise of self-managed abortions in the U.S. following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The series follows a network that helps women access abortion pills without a doctor, a practice initially dismissed in the U.S. due to its legality. The network, which originated in Brazil and expanded to Mexico and Argentina, faced backlash, as well as cultural and policy changes.
Their investigation revealed a parallel history where women in Latin America, especially those from low-income communities, developed their networks and methods for accessing abortion safely, often without clinical supervision. In many places, abortion was and still is heavily restricted, but misoprostol became a widely known option. The drug’s accessibility allowed women to manage abortions privately, often with the support of accompaniment networks—peer groups that offered guidance and emotional support throughout the process.
The pair’s reporting also explored how religion shaped abortion narratives in the region. Despite the Catholic Church’s strong opposition, many women found ways to reconcile their faith with the decision to terminate a pregnancy.
“Being able to make this decision privately at home was a way for women to deal with the decision, also with their religion privately, without fear of being judged,” Estrada said.
Some religious groups, particularly in Argentina, even actively supported abortion rights, challenging the dominant anti-abortion messaging with a faith-based pro-choice stance. One of these groups, Catholics for the Right to Abortion, played a crucial role in Argentina’s fight for legalization and introduced the now-iconic green bandana that became the symbol of the region’s reproductive rights movement.
“The public message was, ‘This is a sin. This is something women shouldn’t do,’” Martinez said. “But then there are women who were religious and who actually were publicly advocating for legalizing abortion as well.”
Their reporting also underscored the disparities in abortion access shaped by class. While wealthier women could afford clandestine clinic procedures or travel abroad for care, poorer women often resorted to riskier, self-induced methods until misoprostol became widely known. Even today, punitive abortion laws in countries like El Salvador continue to criminalize women, sometimes prosecuting them for murder after miscarriages.
The podcast series situates Latin America’s history of self-managed abortion within a global context that is rapidly changing. Martinez and Estrada noted that some of the restrictive patterns they documented in Latin America are now emerging in parts of the United States. Texas’s Senate Bill 8, for instance, mirrored fears and barriers that have long existed in Latin American countries.
“For us, it was interesting to see these patterns that had happened in Latin America 20 to 30 years earlier, kind of happening now in the United States,” Martinez said. “So that was definitely a similarity, the fear, the lack of access, the isolation of people who needed that kind of access.”