GroundReport | Mexico | Pro-Choice Activists May Lose Meager Gains in Mexico City

Pro-Choice Activists May Lose Meager Gains in Mexico City

Finding Dulcinea August 28, 2008

On Monday, September 1, Mexico’s Supreme Court will begin public deliberation to decide whether a law legalizing abortion in Mexico City should be struck down. Just over a year ago, on April 24, 2007, a day pro-life activists called “Black Tuesday,” Mexico City lawmakers, backed by the Democratic Revolutionary Party, made Mexico City the largest Latin American city to legalize abortion, amid fierce debate and opposition. The law allows any woman in Mexico City to seek an abortion in her first trimester, for any reason. Yet, one year later, the International Herald Tribune reported that 85 percent of gynecologists in the city’s public hospitals refused to perform abortions on moral grounds.

In the rest of Mexico, a country where domestic and sexual violence often contribute to unwanted pregnancies, abortion is legal only if the fetus is a threat to the woman’s life, if she had been raped or if the fetus was impaired. According to the Los Angeles Times, a woman must first file a report against her rapist, then obtain a court order to give the doctor. Further, in Mexico City prior to 2007, a woman was required to have photos taken before and after the procedure, a requirement women’s groups called “a deliberate attempt to humiliate.” Human Rights Watch reported in 2006 that this type of treatment caused some women to find unsafe alternatives. Human Rights Watch also reported that, because the age of consent in Mexico is often as low as twelve years old, incest is many times considered “consensual.” The aid group explained, “Pregnant victims of incest and “estupro” (intercourse with a minor) are also, by law, denied the right to a legal abortion." In 2006, however, a 19-year-old mother won a settlement from the Mexican government for refusing to allow her an abortion after she was raped at 13 by a heroin addict, according to the Los Angeles Times.

During the six years through 2007, 524 women were charged in Mexico with having illegal abortions, The Washington Post reported. While the law in Mexico City has changed, the stigma clouding the abortion issue hasn’t disappeared. At public hospitals, women seeking abortions say they are “treated like prostitutes,” activists receive death threats, and doctors like Laura Garcia, the only gynecologist at her hospital who will perform abortions—requiring her to perform seven or eight a day—are harassed. Still, Garcia has seen septic shock and uncontrolled bleeding in women who underwent improperly performed abortions. She defended her decision, telling the International Herald Tribune: “I am a Catholic, but I have convictions. I don’t think I’m going to hell. If I go, it will be for something else.”