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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2006 
Mexico Rape Victims Often Denied Right To Abortion
 Lorraine Orlandi - Reuters
| | Marianne Mollmann speaks about her report for Human Rights Watch on the human rights abuses of rape victims in Mexico titled, 'The Second Assault: Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion in Mexico,' during a news conference in Mexico City Tuesday, March 7, 2006. The report found that state officials across Mexico routinely deny rape victims legally allowed access to safe abortions. (AP/Gregory Bull) |
Mexico City When Sandra Rodriguez, a mentally handicapped live-in maid, was raped by her boss and left pregnant in 2002, Mexican courts stopped her from having an abortion although it was her legal right.
Rodriguez, 30, had the mental capacity of a 10-year-old, court-ordered evaluations showed, but Guanajuato state prosecutors questioned whether she had been raped or consented to sex. She gave birth to a girl who was put up for adoption.
Prosecutors later agreed she was raped and admitted local officials had acted irresponsibly in blocking her abortion.
International and Mexican rights groups say she was one of an untold number of rape victims across Mexico who are routinely prevented from having legal abortions.
What's presumed here is the guilt of the rape victim, said Marianne Mollmann of Human Rights Watch. It's the victim that's presumed to be lying, to have wanted the rape.
A report by Human Rights Watch to be released later on Tuesday details how courts, medical workers and others systematically break Mexican law allowing abortion in rape cases.
Largely Catholic Mexico bans abortion in most cases, but it is legal if the mother becomes pregnant through rape. Still, many public officials ignore that right and even manipulate victims to waive it, activists and federal health workers say.
The issue has proven uncomfortable for President Vicente Fox, a conservative Catholic who took office in 2000 and whose term has been punctuated by controversy over abortion and reproductive rights.
A firestorm erupted during his election campaign over the case of Paulina Ramirez, who had been raped at 13 by two men in her family's home and left pregnant in 1999. Her story drew international attention and pitted Fox's conservative party against rights activists.
Ramirez said health officials in northern Baja California state, then controlled by Fox's party, along with Catholic clergy, anti-abortion activists and others pressured her into forgoing an abortion. She is raising the son born in 2000.
I pass the time working, my mother helps care for him, said Ramirez, now 20. She would like to return to school and perhaps study law but needs her factory job to pay the bills.
Paulina Not Alone
Ramirez sought government reparations and a legal settlement in her case could come this week.
Our report shows that Paulina wasn't the only woman, that every year more than 100 women and girls are in the same situation, Mollmann said. It seems likely that the settlement shows that her rights were infringed and the violations she suffered merit reparations. It would be a precedent.
Mexican law often works against victims. If the rapist was a father, brother, uncle or other relative, the victim may be legally barred from having an abortion.
Many states codify incest as consensual sex, including with girls 12 or younger. That means the victim has no right to an abortion and could end up being charged with incest unless she proves she did not consent.
Until November it was not a crime for a man to rape his wife. Surveys show that 3.5 percent of Mexican women have been raped and 7 percent sexually assaulted, said Dr. Patricia Uribe, a reproductive health expert in the Health Ministry.
For the first time the dimension of the problem in Mexico is being documented, violence against women is frequent, she said. We have a lot to do to inform people of their options. |
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