Why pregnant Texans are heading to Mexico for abortions

A week after Texas’ abortion-restricting law was enacted, Mexico’s Supreme Court dissolved a Coahuila state law that made abortion a crime.

Hernandez worries that patients who once would have come to her clinic are now traveling to Mexico for the procedure or for a medication abortion, which usually involves taking a combination of the abortion-inducing drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. She is concerned that the patients may not get adequate care.

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“What we’ve heard patients say is that they just go to the pharmacy in Mexico, which is literally just walk-in, and the pharmacist will just give you the medication,” she said. Misoprostol, initially approved as an ulcer medication, is available there without a prescription. Mifepristone is not. So sometimes, patients make do with just misoprostol, which can still be effective in ending a pregnancy, though less so when taken alone.

For example, a medication abortion is completed 92 percent of the time when misoprostol and mifepristone are taken together. That rate drops to around 60 percent with only misoprostol.

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