Mexico Lawmakers File Bill to Make Abortion Legal Nationwide 
Email this article
Printer friendly page
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 21, 2007
Mexico City, Mexico (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates in Mexico have been working on legislation in the Mexico City legislature to make abortion legal in the nations’ capital. Now they have filed a measure in the federal Congress as well to try to legalize abortions throughout the county within the first three months of pregnancy.
Meanwhile, Mexico President Felipe Calderon has said he opposes the abortion bill and would veto it if it came to his desk.
Members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, filed the bill on Tuesday in the Mexico Congress that would make abortion legal within the first three months of pregnancy.
The bill also would mandate that government-financed health clinics do abortions if low-income women ask for them.
Sen. Carlos Navarrete who heads the PRD in the Senate and filed the bill, claimed it was necessary to stop dangerous illegal abortions — although making abortion legal hasn’t made it safer.
“We need to stop thousands of women from dying in unsafe operations,” he told the Associated Press. "This is a right our laws should guarantee.”
But Calderon on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to abortion, according to an AP report.
“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.”
PRD is the second largest political party in this strongly Catholic nation, with Calderon’s conservative National Action Party having control of Congress and the PRI party, which ruled Mexico for decades, having a sizable number of votes as well.
The PRD party has also proposed a bill that would make abortions legal in the Mexican capital and that measure is seen as more likely to be approved, since the party has control of the city’s legislature.
More than 8.7 million people live in the federal district and legal abortions there could attract women from all over the country.
Pro-life groups are planning a march in Mexico City on Thursday.
The Catholic 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."
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.
Related web sites:
Comite Nacional Pro Vida – https://www.comiteprovida.org
