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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2007 
Mexico City Lawmakers Pass Abortion Bill
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| | Anti-abortion activists face off with riot police separating them from pro-choice activists near Mexico City's local legislature during the debate and vote to decriminalize abortions up to 12 weeks of gestation, April 24, 2007. (Daniel Aguilar/Reuters) |
Mexico City lawmakers voted to legalize abortion Tuesday, a decision likely to influence policies and health practices across Mexico and other parts of heavily Roman Catholic Latin America.
The proposal, approved 46-19, with one abstention, would take effect with the expected signing by the federal district's leftist mayor. But abortion opponents have already vowed to appeal the law to the Supreme Court, a move likely to extend the bitter and emotional debate in this predominantly Catholic nation.
The law alarmed Mexico's conservative ruling party and prompted the Vatican to send its top anti-abortion campaigner to the Mexican capital, where ranks of riot police separated chanting throngs of demonstrators from both sides outside the city legislature.
Nationally, Mexico allows abortion only in cases of rape, severe birth defects or if the woman's life is at risk, and doctors sometimes even deny the procedure under those circumstances.
The new law will require city hospitals to provide the procedure and opens the way for private abortion clinics. Girls under 18 would have to get their parents' consent.
The procedure will be almost free for poor or insured city residents, but is unlikely to attract patients from the United States, where later-term abortion is legal in many states. Under the Mexico City law, abortion after 12 weeks would be punished by three to six months in jail.
The only other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with legalized abortion for all women are Cuba and Guyana. Most others allow it only in cases of rape or when the woman's life is at risk. Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile ban it completely.
Mexican Capital Legalizes Abortion, Defies Church
Catherine Bremer & Adriana Barrera - Reuters
The Mexican capital legalized abortion on Tuesday, defying the church but delighting feminists in the world's second-largest Roman Catholic country.
Mexico City lawmakers voted 46 to 19 to pass a leftist-sponsored bill allowing women to abort in the first three months of pregnancy.
The abortion vote split Mexico and prompted a letter last week from Pope Benedict urging Mexican bishops to oppose it.
Riot police kept rival groups of rowdy demonstrators apart outside the city's assembly building. Weeping anti-abortion protesters played tape recordings of babies crying and carried tiny white coffins.
Until Tuesday, only Cuba, Guyana and U.S. commonwealth Puerto Rico allowed abortion on demand in Latin America.
Church leaders threatened to excommunicate leftist deputies, mostly from the Party of the Democratic Revolution, who voted in favor of lifting the abortion ban, which will remain in force in the rest of the country.
Opinion polls show Mexico's population of 107 million, of whom some 90 percent are Catholic, is split over abortion.
Supporters of abortion rights, who are well represented in the liberal-minded capital, say 2,000 women die each year in Mexico due to abortions, often poor women who have to resort to unhygienic back-street clinics.
"We don't want any more women to die in clandestine abortions," said leftist local deputy Agustin Guerrero.
The Vatican's second-highest ranking doctrinal official, Archbishop Angelo Amato, denounced abortion and euthanasia on Monday as "terrorism with a human face." |
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