South-to-North Solidarity in Practice: Building Cross-Border Abortion Accompaniment Networks

Verónica Cruz Sánchez, a renowned Mexican human rights defender and founder of the feminist organization Las Libres, will deliver a public lecture and Q&A via Zoom on March 3rd from 3:30-4:45 PM. She has spent more than two decades advancing reproductive autonomy, challenging the criminalization of abortion and miscarriage, and organizing legal and community-based strategies to support predominantly poor, Indigenous, and rural women in Mexico. Her work, which earned her the prestigious Human Rights Watch Defender of Human Rights Award, includes pioneering an accompaniment model in which trained volunteers provide information, emotional support, and practical guidance to people seeking abortions both within and outside formal health systems. In recent years, Las Libres has adapted this model to the U.S. context to expand access to self-managed abortion in the wake of abortion restrictions. Cruz Sánchez’s virtual lecture will offer a unique opportunity to learn from cross-border feminist organizing, examine the ethics and practice of accompaniment for self-managed abortion, and reflect on the implications of Latin American reproductive justice strategies for post-Roe struggles in the United States.