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 Health & Beauty | July 2005 
Mexican Women Crossing Border for Safer Abortions
 Nathaniel Hoffman - Contra Costa Times
Echoes of a generation-old abortion debate are rippling along the border as Mexican women head to San Diego for safe and legal abortions, researchers have found.
Middle-class Mexican women from Tijuana are going to clinics in California to terminate their pregnancies after finding limited or dangerous abortion services at home, said Daniel Grossman, a doctor and researcher at the Population Council, an international organization that researches public health.
Before legalization of abortion in the United States in 1973, affluent American women often traveled abroad for abortions. Many in California who were not necessarily affluent went to Mexico.
"It shows the extent that women in Mexico go to access health services," Grossman said.
Grossman, a Bay Area doctor who now works in Mexico City, said he saw women from Latin America coming as far north as San Francisco for abortions.
His study is among a dozen binational research projects coordinated by the University of California's California-Mexico Health Initiative and funded by a group of U.S. and Mexican government and academic organizations. The preliminary findings were presented Wednesday at a daylong forum at UC Berkeley.
"What we expect is rigorous information and knowledge based on the work of binational research teams" that will help form policies for critical issues the two nations share, said José Lever, director of development and cooperation for the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology, a major funder.
The studies also help debunk stereotypes and misconceptions, Lever said.
One of the presentations Wednesday at UC Berkeley's Faculty Club was the finding that more U.S. citizens are using doctors and medical services in Tijuana than Mexicans seeking health care in San Diego.
"We were surprised that very few people go to San Diego for medical care," said Steven Wallace, associate director of UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research.
Wallace and a colleague at Tijuana's Colegio de la Frontera Norte found that Americans go south of the border for prescriptions, dental care and plastic surgery. One survey showed that 3 percent to 5 percent of Californians, many without health insurance, sought cheaper treatment in Mexico, Wallace said.
The medical tourists force Mexicans to compete with their dollars and burden the Mexican health-care system, he said.
"I wouldn't call it a vicious cycle," Wallace said. "But it's not a virtuous cycle."
Abortion is a growing political issue in Mexico, which highly restricts the procedure.
The World Health Organization estimates that Latin Americans, including Mexicans, have 700,000 unsafe abortions annually; other estimates are higher.
Grossman's study found that about 20 percent of the women recently visiting San Diego's largest abortion clinic had Mexican addresses.
Almost a quarter of those women said that they did not trust Mexican abortion providers.
Wallace found that working-class women in Tijuana frequently seek local abortions.
Grossman intends to study a Texas border town with fewer abortion options on the U.S. side and where American women may still be seeking services in Mexico.
Other studies presented Wednesday looked at the mental health issues involved in migration, the prevalence of obesity among migrant women and children, and the use of remittances from the United States to pay for additional health care in Mexico. |
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