Ipas Central America and Mexico

I would use Elevate Prize funding for rapid scale-up of Ipas’s innovative and proven strategies to provide abortion information and accompaniment to Central American and Mexican women and girls. Increasingly, women manage abortion themselves using medications, also known as abortion self-care. In restrictive settings, abortion self-care is one of the primary pathways to care, allowing pregnant people more control over the process as well as the ability to avoid stigma, discrimination, and other barriers in health facilities.

Ipas Central America and Mexico works with grassroots organizations that support women who choose abortion self-care. Our approach incorporates user-centered design to ensure our strategies respond to local contexts and individual preferences for abortion care. Information and accompaniment for abortion self-care are in high demand, but unfortunately these organizations often lack sufficient resources to respond. Ipas receives numerous requests for capacity strengthening to improve abortion knowledge, develop security protocols, strengthen referrals, and to create materials to reach women with appropriate, easy-to-understand information. If selected, I would direct funding to increase access and support for abortion self-care by strengthening local capacities, growing our pool of partners, and expanding to new regions so every woman and girl has the information and support she needs.

I am Director of Ipas Central America and Mexico, an organization working to expand access to abortion and contraception. The right to information and quality reproductive health care is essential to bodily autonomy and achieving gender equality, and we know that building gender equality is necessary for other human rights, health, and development.

I came to Ipas after more than 20 years defending sexual and reproductive health and rights, especially those of young people in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since I was a young girl, I was involved in social movements. As a youth activist, I founded the Mexican organizations Balance and Elige, as well as the Latin America and the Caribbean Network (RedLAC) and Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. My own abortion experience when I was 18, when abortion was illegal in Mexico City, led me to this life-long work of ensuring abortion and contraception are safe and available to all. At Ipas, I am able to continue this vision and decades-long journey where I lead dedicated and passionate staff that are working to build a world where every woman and girl has the right and ability to determine her own sexuality and reproductive health.

Women and girls in Central America and Mexico experience significant violence and barriers to sexual and reproductive health services. The region is home to some of the most draconian abortion laws in the world, where women seeking abortion and those that support them are often persecuted and even imprisoned. Three countries, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, prohibit abortion in all circumstances, and Honduras also bans emergency contraception. In this context, an estimated 5.8 million women in Central America and 4.2 million women in Mexico have an unmet need for modern contraception (Guttmacher, 2021). 

Restricting access to essential sexual and reproductive health care risks the health and lives of women and girls, especially those from marginalized groups who experience discrimination at multiple intersections of their identities. Ipas works closely with health workers and community partners to reach those most impacted by restrictive policies and State neglect. We share information and support with those needing abortion care, train providers, equip facilities, and educate young people about their rights. Ipas implements a user-centered design approach to ensure women’s sexual and reproductive health preferences and experiences are at the center of everything we do and build local leadership and capacity in the process.

Ipas is the only international organization that solely focuses on expanding access to abortion and contraception. In Central America and Mexico, this expertise makes us a valued partner among diverse stakeholders, ranging from activists to government representatives. We advocate to connect abortion rights to the fight for other human rights and social movements for universal health care, gender equity, and social justice.

Our approach is innovative in that we center our work on the needs and perspectives of individuals who can become pregnant, and we strengthen access to multiple pathways to abortion care, including abortion self-care and digital health strategies. We work across institutions, communities, and social groups that influence abortion access and rights. To guide these efforts, Ipas developed a framework for achieving a sustainable abortion ecosystem, which we define as a dynamic condition in which resilient local stakeholders and systems are actively accountable and committed to abortion rights and responsive to everyone’s abortion needs. This framework uses human-centered design to respond to the complex environment in which people make abortion decisions, facilitating program planning and actions that are dynamic, resilient, and able to achieve long-term systems change for abortion access.

Ending forced pregnancy is necessary to accomplish the sustainable development goals, bodily autonomy, and gender equality. When women and girls are unable to access the information and care they need to make informed choices about their bodies, their ability to fully realize their potential is significantly curtailed. Greater gender equality contributes to an overall improvement in societal health, wellbeing, and development.

Ipas Central America and Mexico is expanding abortion and contraceptive access in one of the most unequal and restrictive regions for reproductive rights in the world. We share information with women and collaborate with community-based organizations to increase social support for abortion and ensure pathways to women-centered, quality care. We develop digital tools and materials, like an online chatbot and telehealth options, to increase access to clear, evidence-based information on abortion self-care. We also provide resources and technical accompaniment to activists and feminist organizations that support women seeking safe and affirming options to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. This work contributes to improved community social norms and support for abortion, reduced criminalization of women seeking abortion and those who help them, and improved access to health care for underserved communities.