Media Roundtable: Pregnant women who reach US-Mexico border face horrific violence, according to Capital & Main investigation - Publication Date |
- Jul 29, 2022
- Episode Duration |
- 00:29:07
On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, we're discussing a two-year Capital & Main investigation that exposes how pregnant mothers fall prey to horrific violence as the migrant population swells in Northern Mexico.
According to the report, in recent years, the proportion of female migrants in Mexico from Central America has jumped 70 percent from El Salvador, and 140 percent from Guatemala. Women flee their homes for different reasons, including “intractable, unresolved and recurring conflicts and violence,” according to the United Nations Migration Agency, in addition to longstanding poverty.
Advocates say pregnant women are targets for cartels that menace, exploit, and extort migrants at the border because they tend to be among the most desperate and physically vulnerable. Women have been kidnapped, beaten, and shot by gangs hungry for profits. On more than one occasion, the violence has triggered women to go into labor.