Consider this from NPR: NPR

Raquel (R) and Rebeca Salas at their home in Phoenix, AZ on October 6, 2024.

Keren Carrión/NPR

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Keren Carrión/NPR

Raquel (R) and Rebeca Salas at their home in Phoenix, AZ on October 6, 2024.

Keren Carrión/NPR

In Arizona, President Biden won by a small margin in 2020 – just over ten thousand votes.

Arizona Latinos helped achieve this victory. They represent a quarter of all eligible voters in this state – and that is the highest percentage of Latino voters in any swing state.

This week, Consider this presenter Ailsa Chang’s report took her to a trailer in the arid state. She joined Mayra Rodriguez in her mission to go directly to this bloc of voters on the issue they care about most – abortion. Even if it means putting up with terrible air conditioning in the RV when it’s 108 degrees outside.

“You get sweaty, it’s hot, right? And that’s what I tell my kids, and anyone who complains about this heat, if you don’t like heat, imagine hell,” Rodriguez told Chang.

Hell, for Rodriguez, would be seeing Proposition 139 pass — a ballot measure that would expand access to abortion beyond the current 15 weeks here in Arizona, and that would enshrine it as a right under the state constitution.

This mobile billboard brings urgent warnings about abortion.
But Rodriguez has an uphill battle here. Because, according to the Pew Research Center, 62% of Latinos believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But it wasn’t always like that.

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Changing values

Two decades ago, only a third of Latinos believed that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Today, that number has risen to 62%. So why are Latino voters in this country changing their minds about abortion?

Consider this spoke to some Latino voters in Arizona to ask their thoughts on why.

Raquel Salas and her daughter Rebeca consider that even addressing the topic was considered taboo for many years.

“I feel like the perception is that we don’t do abortions because we live within the Catholic Church and we just follow whatever the priest says we will do. And again, in general, the perception about Latinos is very wrong,” Raquel said. .

The Salas family emigrated from Hermosillo, Mexico, in 2011 – when Rebeca was just 7 years old. And when she was growing up, the mere topic of abortion never came up. Raquel says this also happened to her when she was a girl in Mexico.

Raquel’s mother had her when she was 17. “Back then, when girls got pregnant, they would also come to the U.S. to get an abortion and no one would know, or they would force them to get married.”

All this changed between Raquel and Rebeca on June 24, 2022, when the Federal Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. Rebeca was traveling in Italy when she discovered:

“The first thing I did was call my mom and I thought, ‘What’s going on? I don’t understand’. And we talked about it, but I was furious.”

A few days later, Rebeca was back in Arizona and decided to participate in a protest at the Capitol. And her mother insisted on joining her.

Both Raquel and Rebeca say that they themselves would never have an abortion. But both want to protect third-party access.

“I know that after Trump’s presidency, a lot of people were scared. Many of our rights were in danger. (And) when they start limiting rights, they are affecting the neediest population. And if you do that with the my neighbor, what’s next?” Raquel added.

Home culture.

Margarita Acosta lives in Cochise Fortress – a remote canyon dotted with craggy granite boulders. She found peace here, because of something she started talking about publicly, which happened 40 years ago.

Acosta was 29 years old and living in Bogotá when she discovered she was pregnant. But abortion was illegal in Colombia at the time – you could spend years in prison just for being caught inside a clinic. Still, she knew she didn’t want to have the baby. So, she found a secret clinic and made an appointment.

“I remember a normal apartment complex. It was on the third floor and there was no elevator.”

The doctor told her to come alone and that there would be no anesthesia as she would have to walk outside alone.

“So he did what he wanted and then they gave me a pad and he said, ‘You’re going to bleed a lot, but if it’s been more than three days and you’re in a lot of pain, go to the emergency room. come here. Like, okay, I remember walking down the stairs, just looking at the floor, and I was wearing high heels.

Acosta never spoke about it because of the shame he felt. And immigrating to the U.S. soon after gave her a sense of freedom that she hadn’t experienced in Colombia.

In the same year that Roe v. Wade was annulled, abortion became legal in his home country.

“Maybe this country that they say we were behind, maybe we were ahead,” she told Chang. “Because I know what’s coming for you now. You have to pay attention.”

This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell, Jonakhi Mehta and Kathryn Fink. It was edited by William Troop. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.