In the late 1920's, Kahlo joined the Mexican Communist Party and was introduced to a circle of political activists and artists, among them Diego Rivera, whom she married in 1929. She traveled extensively in the United States with Rivera beginning in 1930 as he undertook mural projects in San Francisco and opened his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While he was working on a mural project in Detroit, Kahlo experienced a miscarriage following a difficult pregnancy. In 1925, while she was pursuing medical school, Kahlo had experienced a crippling traffic accident that would cause her lifelong pain and ultimately made it impossible for her to bear children. To combat her depression during her recovery from the miscarriage, Kahlo was convinced to try lithography at a local printmaking workshop, where she struggled with the medium. One of only six known impressions from this experience, El Aborto is the only significant print she ever made. It is graphic in its anatomical references to her miscarriage, but powerful in its symbolism. Biographer Hayden Herrera observed that in the print Kahlo's body is divided into light and dark halves, revealing the two sides of her psyche; it would seem that for her, making art must take the place of making children.

Karin Breuer