"I hadn't slept and I was afraid, even though I knew it was a safe place," said Ana, the law student, describing the day she arrived at a public hospital for her abortion.
"I believe in God. And at that moment I asked him that nothing happen to me. I wanted to keep on living," she continued. "If I had made that decision [to have an abortion], it was because I wanted to continue with my life goals, not to die."
In the end, there were no medical complications. Ana recently completed her midterm exams.
"A lot of people can judge me for what I did . . . but I made the decision to be responsible," Ana wrote. "If you decide to have a child it should be because you want to, and because you can offer him a decent life."
Nearly all of the abortions at the public hospitals have been performed without complications, said Dr. Manuel Mondragon, the city's top public health official. A quarter have been nonsurgical, with patients given abortion-inducing drugs.
"We know other countries are looking at us, and soon we will be publishing studies about our experience," Mondragon said.
Abortion rights activists say Mondragon's efforts to make abortions safe and widely available in Mexico City will be remembered as a landmark in Latin America's reproductive rights movement.
Mondragon said making abortion legal was a crucial public health issue because of the high rates of death and injury caused by illegal abortions: According to one estimate, more than 3,500 women died from botched abortions each year.
"It hasn't been an easy situation," said Mondragon, 73, who says that he has received death threats and that protesters have distributed pamphlets labeling him a killer. "I am a Catholic, my family is very Catholic, and I have my personal beliefs. But when you're in public administration, that's one of the challenges."
Abortion opponents launched a highly publicized campaign to persuade doctors and nurses at the clinics to be "conscientious objectors" and refuse to participate in abortions.
Serrano Limon, the antiabortion activist, said 22 doctors and about 60 nurses and social workers had declared themselves conscientious objectors. Mondragon said the activists' efforts had not hindered the city's abortion services.
Medeles, the single mother from Guadalajara, didn't encounter any antiabortion activists in Mexico City. She said she met only doctors and nurses whose treatment of her was surprisingly professional.
