The opening of a new Marie Stopes International (MSI) abortion facility in Cancún, Mexico, reveals what may be a new strategy for the abortion industry: “abortion tourism,” in which women are lured by the idea of a luxury vacation while their preborn child is killed.
A recent article in Mother Jones refers to this tourism with the euphemistic phrase, “reproductive health migration,” detailing the price breakdown for a woman traveling from Mississippi to Cancún for an abortion. Estimations place the cost, which includes three nights at a three-star hotel, at around $700. The article points out that while this cost is not insignificant, it could still be cheaper than traveling for a surgical abortion in the States.
“You have a lot more direct flights to Cancún than to any other city in Mexico,” Araceli Lopez Nava Vázquez, regional managing director of MSI in Latin America, told STAT. “That was an important thing for us to consider… We’re aiming to help more American women.”
According to The Messenger, the MSI facility will commit up to 15 first-trimester D&C abortions a day. During this abortion procedure, the preborn child is suctioned from the womb and is torn to pieces in the process.
Alison González, operations manager for the pro-life platform ConParticipación, spoke to ACI Prensa about the facility’s new opening, especially as it is being positioned as an opportunity for women who want to get an abortion while on vacation. “It’s unfortunate that instead of addressing the crises that many pregnant women are going through, companies seek to profit from the pain and desperation of many women,” she said. “It’s easy to imagine that Cancún could be an ‘ideal place’ to receive American women where, for a cost similar to what they would pay to travel to another U.S. state, they can travel to Cancún, romanticizing a terrible deed such as an abortion procedure.”
“The idea of paying a few hundred dollars for a round-trip flight, a few days of lodging in an all-inclusive hotel in addition to the procedure to have the abortion is extremely attractive,” she added.
