Talking about abortion in Mexico

Mexico City pays for early abortion for any women who seeks it.  Contrast that to the U.S. healthcare reform efforts, which have devolved into a debate over how best to reassure taxpayers that federal funds will not be used to pay for women to access abortion.

We can learn a lot by studying the communications strategies of Mexican health advocates, who a few years ago defied all odds and legalized first trimester abortion in Mexico City. “We didn’t take the streets, we took the media”, observed Maria Luisa Sanchez Fuentes, one of the primary leaders of the Mexican legalization movement.

We recently sat down with Sanchez Fuentes when she was an honored guest speaker at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health gala.  We asked her to talk about what communications strategies broke through the political and religious barriers that had thwarted efforts for decades to legalize abortion anywhere in Mexico. GIRE, the national Mexican organization headed by Sanchez Fuentes, has a long road ahead to further liberalize legal access to abortion in Mexico.  The political and legal backlash to the Mexico City gains in other Mexican localities have been severe.  But what is clear is that GIRE and their allies are walking down a different message road than U.S.-based abortion supporters, and creating public support for legal abortion within a very different values context.

You can watch the interview with Sanchez Fuentes here.

The first thing that might surprise you is the amount of support that exists for legal abortion among Mexicans.  In the United States, the conventional wisdom often is that Mexicans on both sides of the border are guided by Catholic doctrine on abortion.  While the influence of Catholic leadership must be seriously considered, this blanket assumption needs another look.  A recent poll by the Mexican government found that 62% of Mexicans say they “don’t believe the government should intervene in a woman’s right to choose.”  In Mexico City, a poll commissioned by the Population Council found that  66% of residents “thought the city’s decriminalization laws signaled a step forward for the country”.  In media interviews, Catholic leaders in Mexico bemoaned the practice of Catholics straying from church doctrine and warned healthcare providers that they will go to hell for providing abortion.  In what may be a sign of Catholics separating their decisions on abortion from their religious beliefs, one Catholic abortion provider in Mexico City said she may end up going to hell, but not for providing abortion care.

Recent polls in the United States show some movement in public opinion among Latinos, but more research is needed to fully understand the real views of this demographic. Pew’s latest poll on abortion attitudes found that “while whites have become significantly more pro-life, the movement among Hispanics has been primarily into the undecided camp”.

Sanchez Fuentes described what has – and what has not – been effective in abortion messaging among Mexicans.  Their best message focused on the decision, and who had the right to make it.  This dialogue was grounded in human rights language, connecting human values to the decision-making process.  Rather than focusing on an individualistic perspective, such as the interruption of a life plan, their messages focused on the complexity of the decision, such as when and how to start a family.  They took on opponents with a messaging campaign about “life” and “family”  taking ownership of the complexity of those concepts.

These message strategies are in synch with a recent worldwide survey of attitudes about human rights.  Mexico led the world in support for women’s right to have full equality compared to men as well as the desire to have government play a larger role in preventing discrimination against women.  In contrast, respondents in the U.S. strongly endorsed the concept of gender equality but did not favor greater government efforts to achieve equality.  A survey of attitudes is a great distance from lived realities, but it may demonstrate an opportunity to center reproductive health access in a human rights message model.

Sanchez Fuentes suggests that U.S. and Mexican movement leaders come together to learn from each other.  A cross-border summit on messaging and reproductive health could, among other things, help us deepen our understanding of promoting a values-based discussion in political climates that are deeply impacted by religious doctrine.  As Mexico lurches forward in liberalizing abortion access while the United States teeters on the edge of backsliding, such a cross-border convening could be a powerful strategic investment.