Mexico Capital’s Legislature Considers Bill to Legalize Abortion
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 14, 2007
Mexico City, Mexico (LifeNews.com) — The legislature of Mexico City wants to make it the first place in Mexico to legalize abortion. The North American nation bans abortion and pro-life groups and Catholic Church leaders have vowed to fight the move to allow it.
The city’s legislature may soon consider a bill that would legalize abortions within the first three months of pregnancy and backers believe they have a majority of the votes needed to pass it.
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 of the Democratic Revolution which has control of the city’s top political offices and 34 of 66 city legislative seats, told Reuters that 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.
Armando Martinez, speaking for the country’s Catholic Archdiocese, told Reuters the church would challenge the law in court and organize massive protests of pro-life people. The church may also sponsor its own political party to respond to the vote.
"If the assembly can’t be the city’s conscience, we will have to form our own party to represent us," Martinez said.
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 sites:
Comite Nacional Pro Vida – https://www.comiteprovida.org
