NUEVO PROGRESO, México (TEXAS TRIBUNE) — María laid the pregnancy test face-down on the bathroom counter at her boyfriend’s place in McAllen and started a timer for what would feel like the three longest minutes of her life.
She watched the timer, quietly running through her checklist of assurances: a condom had been used; she’d taken the Plan B pill; maybe the missed period was just a fluke.
“I was just praying, please don’t let this be it,” she said. “I had no idea how I would handle this. But what choice did I have but turn the test over?”
It came back positive.
Maria, who at the time was a 17-year-old high school student, spoke to The Texas Tribune on condition of anonymity, identifying herself in this story with a pseudonym because she fears the consequences from her family for sharing her experience.
Maria hailed from generations of teenage mothers, and while her Catholic parents didn’t talk much with her about sex, they held clear expectations for her. They wanted her to leave the area for college and pursue her dream of studying law.
She decided she could not have the baby.
It happened in October 2020, a year before Texas enacted what would become the country’s most restrictive abortion law, and 18 months before Politico obtained a leaked draft showing the U.S. Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that constitutionally protected abortion.
But even before all that, María had few options for obtaining a legal abortion. There was only one clinic in the Rio Grande Valley, and she would have needed parental consent or a court-ordered referral. Even finding the money to pay for a legal abortion seemed like an insurmountable hurdle.
Yet living along the border presented another option.
Regulated and cheaper medicines are available without a prescription in Mexican pharmacies just steps across the border. Rio Grande Valley residents and people from all corners of the state often cross into Mexico for dental work or to stock up on everything from daily vitamins and epinephrine to Valium and Xanax.
And then there is misoprostol, a medication taken by mouth to prevent ulcers or to terminate pregnancies.
Texas regulates abortion-inducing drugs like misoprostol far more strictly than federal rules require; they can be prescribed and dispensed only in person by a physician during the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
But just across the border, the situation is different.
With abortion protections in the United States at stake, advocates for reproductive rights expect more Texans to cross into Mexico to obtain abortion medications that aren’t legally available in their own country.
Yet despite the ease of access, abortion remains highly stigmatized in the largely Catholic communities on both sides of the border, which poses risks for patients who may need medical care after a self-managed abortion.
Maria first learned about self-managed abortions online. She knew she could obtain the pills at a pharmacy across the border much more easily than she could access a legal abortion in Texas.
“I was definitely worried about the legality of this,” Maria said. “But I also knew that odds were I’d likely be fine and I had to do it.”
Across the Border
Jesus, Pope John Paul II, and the Virgin of Guadalupe look down on customers who buy abortion medications at Uncle Sam Pharmacy in Nuevo Progreso, a Mexican border town on the Rio Grande about 25 miles from McAllen.
Portraits hang above the medicine shelves, a reminder of how closely religion and daily life intertwine in the region. But Víctor Olvera, the pharmacy’s manager, knows that no matter the religious beliefs of many in the border area, there will always be customers seeking to end pregnancies.
Olvera hopes that changes in access to abortion in the U.S. will translate into more business for Uncle Sam Pharmacy.
“The law is going to change and more people are going to come,” Olvera said.
He isn’t planning to stock up on more misoprostol yet; he said he’ll wait and see. The drug is cheap to buy: some Nuevo Progreso pharmacies sell generic misoprostol for as little as $20, while well-known brands like Pfizer tend to run over $140. Pharmacists at seven different places told this week that they have received no complaints over the years about the drug’s complications.
Misoprostol has 80% to 95% effectiveness at ending early pregnancies when used alone. In the United States, it is approved by the FDA to be used in combination with mifepristone to terminate pregnancies up to 10 weeks gestation.
Although U.S. regulators have approved only the two-drug regimen, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the World Health Organization
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