A New Documentary About Three Women and Their Personal Struggle For Abortion Rights in Mexico

More than 20 million women will choose to have an abortion in Latin America this year. Because it is illegal in most countries in the region, the vast majority of these women will not have access to a safe abortion. Thousands die each year as a result. In Mexico alone, over 500,000 abortions are performed each year. Most of these abortions are considered illegal. In fact, abortion will be the most frequently committed “crime” in Mexico this year.

“Aborto Sin Pena” (“Abortion without shame”) is a new documentary which paints intimate portaits of three women: Yojani, Berenice, and Valentina. Each has chosen to tell her own personal experience with abortion on camera without hiding her face or her identity. This very fact is a radical and political act in a country where abortion is still illegal. Some of the topics discussed include the rights of indigenous women to choose the number of children they wish to have, responsible parenting, and the myth of “post-abortion syndrome.”

“I don’t need any organization to represent me” argues Yojani in the film to female Comandantes of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, as she finds herself becoming a radical political activist. By allowing three women to serve as their own advocates, “Aborto Sin Pena” argues that the people with the most moral authority to lead a movement for abortion rights’ in Mexico are women who have had abortions themselves.

During his “Dispatches From Rebel Mexico” film and lecture tour, filmmaker Greg Berger (winner of the 2004 Latin American Studies Association’s Merit in Film Award) will offer special presentations of “Aborto Sin Pena.” Presentations will include live Q&A sessions between audience members and women from the film via cell phone.

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