A new law for Mexico City permitting abortion on demand in early pregnancy was hailed on Wednesday as a landmark in the fight for women’s rights across Latin America.
The legislation, approved on Tuesday by the left-wing majority in the capital’s local parliament, instructs local health services to provide abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, no questions asked. The law does not restrict who can offer the service, opening the door for specialised private clinics.
Laura Miranda, the Mexico representative of the United Kingdom-based reproductive rights group Marie Stopes, hailed the move as ”a great triumph for human rights”.
”Our hope is that this spreads to other states in Mexico and other countries in Latin America,” she said.
The group runs a family-planning project in the southern state of Chiapas, but is now planning a clinic offering legal abortions in the capital.
Legislation in the rest of Mexico allows terminations only in cases such as rape and when the mother’s life is threatened, and even these are often impossible to obtain. A similar situation exists in most Latin-American countries and there is a total ban on abortions in Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Only Cuba and Guyana have more liberal legislation.
Estimates of the number of women who abort illegally in Mexico every year range from 200 000 to a million. A minority turn to doctors willing to offer discretion and safety at a price. The poor majority resort to aggressive herbal concoctions and quasi-medical practices. Estimates of the annual death toll range from 15 to 1 500.
”The main reason women risk their lives with unsafe abortion is desperation,” Miranda said.
Departure from tradition
The Mexico City law is a dramatic departure from a long tradition of sweeping the issue under the carpet in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.
This week’s vote was preceded by two months of heated debate, emotive marches, threats of excommunication, aggressive television advertising and diatribes denying the bishops the right to express any opinion at all.
After the vote, a crowd gathered to chant ”Yes, we did it!” at a monument to 19th-century anti-clerical reformer Benito Juárez in central Mexico City. ”I feel happy, because this is a step forward, not backwards, for a woman’s right and freedom to choose … about her body and her life,” demonstrator Gabriela Cruz (36) told the Associated Press.
The passage of the law reflects liberalising attitudes, particularly in the capital, as well as the waning influence of a church hierarchy hit by a series of sexual abuse scandals.
But abortion remains an issue dividing the nation exactly in half, according to a poll in January by research company Consulta Mitofsky, and those who oppose the law have vowed to fight on.
”This is a step backwards for democracy,” Armando MartÃÂnez, the leader of the College of Catholic Lawyers of Mexico, said after the Bill was approved on Tuesday. His group had pushed for a referendum and is now seeking ways to challenge the law in the Supreme Court. Other activists have promised pickets at clinics.
The right may be tempted to tighten the law in states they control. They also control the federal government.
Cardinal Norberto Rivera, representing the Catholic Church, is expected to make a public comment about the vote on Sunday. — Guardian Unlimited Â