Mexico City Allows Legal Abortions - Religion Will Fight Back

Filed in archive Latin Culture , Latin News on April 27, 2007

Mexico City lawmakers approved the legalization of abortion last Tuesday. Regulations for the law will be published next week, but City Health Secretary Manuel Mondragon said that pregnant women near the 12 week of gestation would be allowed to have abortions beginning today.

Mondragon also said that women seeking abortions will have to prove they are residents of the city, except in cases of medical emergency; and that each facility will be able to perform about seven abortions per day. Girls younger than age 18 will need parental consent to obtain an abortion.

The procedure will be available at no cost at 14 of the 28 hospitals in the city. It's not clear if private hospitals would be obligated to provide the procedure.

Gynecologists who have moral objections will be allowed to refuse to perform abortions.

Catholics and pro-life groups are unhappy, of course. Some groups have even threatened to engage in acts of civil disobedience, to keep abortions from being done. Fortunately, others have chosen a more productive path: they are preparing educational campaigns to educate and inform women about abortion and other alternatives, like giving the baby in adoption.

Catholic World News also reported that several pro-life groups in the nation will "intensify efforts to promote adoption as an alternative to abortion and to support laws that prevent employers from firing pregnant women."

A pro-life group of Catholic attorneys - the College of Catholic Lawyers - have already announced that they will pursue a lawsuit, and will file a complaint to Inter-American Court of Human Rights seeking to get the law declared unconstitutional. The College says the law violates a clause in the Mexican Constitution, which states the government must defend life "from conception until its natural end." According to Reuters, Mexican law prevents the Roman Catholic Church from appealing the law to the country's Supreme Court

The fight is heating up, and I think it will probably get dirtier and uglier before it ends.