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Abortion rights upheld in Mexico City
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-29 10:31 Mexico's supreme court Thursday upheld the capital's abortion law by dismissing a challenge brought by the conservative federal government by eight votes to three. The law, in effect since April last year, requires Mexico City health services to provide free terminations to any woman up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy. The chief federal prosecutor and the national human rights ombudsman took the case to the supreme court, arguing that the constitution's guarantee of the right to life obliged the authorities to prioritise the protection of every unborn child, from the moment of conception, over a woman's right to choose. A formal vote by the 11 supreme court justices was delivered Thursday, but over the course of a televised discussion lasting several days, eight of the justices made clear they disagreed with the challenge. Along with Cuba, Mexico City has the most liberal abortion legislation in Latin America. Fearful of exposing divisions in a country that values its anticlerical political tradition as deeply as its Catholic heritage, politicians and bishops had avoided the abortion question for decades. The laws of most Mexican states allow terminations in cases of rape, risk to the mother's life or severe foetal deformities. In practice almost no states offer abortions in such cases. However, nor do they prosecute the doctors who offer safe illegal abortions or the cheaper life-threatening backstreet practitioners. Many thought this compromise would end when the Catholic conservative National Action party won the 2000 general election, after 71 years of rule by the nominally progressive Institutional Revolutionary party. But the right remained wary and it was left to the capital's leftwing authority to pass legislation. Feminists want abortion on demand across Mexico. A fifth of the 12,000 women given free abortions in the capital had gone there from elsewhere in Mexico. |
