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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2007 
Mexico's Senates Considers Legalizing Abortion Across Nation
 Ioan Grillo - Associated Press
| | A Senate session in Mexico City. |
Mexico City – Senators from Mexico's largest leftist party this week sent a bill proposing to legalize abortion across the entire country, a measure that is stridently opposed by the nation's conservative and Roman Catholic leaders.
Under the bill filed by the Democratic Revolution Party or PRD, the second largest force in Congress, women would be able to have an abortion within the first three months of pregnancy. The bill also proposes that government health clinics provide women with the abortions if they require them.
“We need to stop thousands of women from dying in unsafe operations,” said Sen. Carlos Navarette who heads the PRD in the upper house. “This is a right our laws should guarantee.”
Under current Mexican law, abortion is only permitted if the pregnancy endangers a woman's life or if the woman has been raped.
Many wealthier Mexican women travel to the United States for the procedures while thousands more poorer women remain in Mexico and have back-street operations
The PRD has also proposed legalizing abortion in the capital where they hold the mayorship and a majority of lawmakers. Mexico City, with a population of 8.7 million, is a federal district similar to Washington, D.C., with its own legislature.
PRD lawmakers say they are confident their majority in the capital will guarantee it becomes Mexico's first district to change the abortion rules
But it could be harder to pass an abortion bill at a national level, where the conservative National Action Party of President Felipe Calderón is the strongest force.
Calderón on Tuesday reiterated his position against abortion.
“I have a personal conviction, and I am in defense of life,” he told a news conference. “I have a plain respect for dignity and human life and within this I believe the existing legislation is adequate.”
On Thursday, pro-life groups plan to march in Mexico City to oppose more liberal abortion laws.
However, Navarette said he has confident the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI will vote with the PRD to support a law change at a national level.
The PRI has many socially liberal members and in January, a PRI governor of the northern state of Coahuila signed a law allowing gay couples to register civil unions, in which they get social benefits similar to those of married couples
A similar law has also been approved in Mexico City, and a series of couples signed up for gay unions in jubilant ceremonies last week.
“I am delighted that Mexico is gaining a more progressive image around the world,” Navarrette said. “I hope these reforms will spread.”
About 90 percent of Mexicans consider themselves Roman Catholic, but many have increasingly liberal views on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
Mexico City's Attempt to Legalize Abortion Draws Catholic Church Rebuke
Steven Ertelt - LifeNews.com
Mexico City, Mexico - An attempt by the local legislature in Mexico City to legalize all abortions within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy and open the door to the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug has drawn a sharp rebuke from the nation's Catholic bishops. They called the legislation the beginning of a "program of extermination."
The Bishops’ Conference of Mexico is opposing the bill and calling on legislators in Mexico's capital city to "reaffirm their commitment to life."
"Faced with this program of extermination, as pastors, but above all as human beings, we are obliged to raise our voice in support of the life of the most defenseless," the bishops said in a statement.
Bishop Carlos Aguiar Retes and Bishop Jose Leopoldo Gonzalez Gonzalez sign the statement on behalf of Catholic leaders throughout the nation.
According to the ACI Prensa news agency, the bishops emphasized that human life begins at conception and that science confirms that a unique human being comes into existence at that point.
“But even if there were some doubt as to whether the fruit of conception is already a human person,” they called abortion "a grave sin."
The bishops also say the law would violate the Mexican constitution, which offers protection for human life and says “the State has the duty to guarantee and support respect for the life of every human being.”
Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Mexico City, Hugo Valdemar, is also speaking out against the pro-abortion proposal and said that members of the Socialist PRD party, which controls the local legislature and is behind the bill, “do not want to understand that it is not true that the people support these reforms or that the majority of the country is left-wing.”
He said polls show just 30 percent of Mexicans support the party nationwide.
Though the North American nation bans abortion and its citizens are strongly pro-life backers believe they have a majority of the votes needed to pass the bill.
If the bill is approved in the coming months, the first legal abortions could take place there before the end of the year.
Victor Hugo Cirigo, a member of the leftist party which has control of the city's top political offices and 34 of 66 city legislative seats, previously said the influential Catholic Church shouldn't control the nation's abortion laws.
"No church, no religion can impose its vision of the world in this city," he said.
Mexico City currently allows abortions in cases of rape or incest and when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother while the rest of the nation only allows abortions in cases of sexual abuse.
Raimundo Rojas, the Hispanic outreach director for National Right to Life, isn't surprised by the bill.
"The push for a world-wide 'right to abortion'never ends because pro-abortion forces strategically chose areas where pro-life laws are vulnerable. Places where left-leaning governments are in place are their favorite targets, due to the fact that as a rule, leftist governments are anti-church and very liberal on social issues," he told LifeNews.com.
"Pro-lifers in Mexico City have much work ahead of them, and they must take their fight to the streets. It is imperative for them to take this argument to the good people of Mexico City and in the strongest possible terms make them aware that abortion destroys," he added.
Cirigo said his party, which has sponsored a pro-abortion bill in the Legislative Assembly of Mexico City before, is also looking to legalize assisted suicide in the nation's capital.
However, that would go against the views of the Mexican people.
The Parametra polling firm surveyed 1,000 Mexican adults in September and asked whether a physician should be able to end the life of a patient in the event "a group of specialists deems that his or her disease is incurable."
The survey found that 46 percent of Mexicans disagree with euthanasia in such a case while 39 percent supported killing the patient in that circumstance.
Mexico recently elected President Felipe Calderon, an outspoken pro-life Catholic whose ruling National Action Party is largely pro-life.
The July 2006 election results showed Calderon winning with 36.46% and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in second with 35.42%. Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was a distant third, with 21.28% of the vote.
Calderon was considered the most pro-life candidate in the race and wants to keep the nation's pro-life laws. He has said in previous interviews that he opposes distributing the morning after pill, which can sometimes cause an abortion.
"On the subject of abortion, I am pro-life, and I also see that it is a matter clearly regulated by law, and most of all in judicial terms well settled," he told Knight Ridder news.
Related web site: Comite Nacional Pro Vida |
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