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.

“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.