Need a Safe Abortion? Go to Mexico City (AlterNet)

Need a Safe Abortion? Go to Mexico City

By Kavita N. Ramdas and Maria Luisa Sanchez, AlterNet. Posted April 23, 2007.



On Tuesday Mexico City, one of the most progressive governments in Latin America, may make a dramatic policy shift to legalize abortion.

It is easier to access contraceptive services in Iran, an Islamic theocracy, than it is in Mexico or other Latin American countries. In the U.S. the pro-choice movement is reeling from last Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling to uphold a ban on partial-birth abortions.

U.N. data shows that in countries where women have access to safe contraception, reproductive health care, and legal abortion, the actual abortion rates are much lower than in countries where women do not have such rights.

Mexico's state-by-state abortion laws are among the most restrictive, and the abortions available for poor women are often life threatening. It is estimated that somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 illegal abortions occur annually across the country, making abortion the fifth-leading national cause of maternal mortality and the third-leading cause in Mexico City.

This is why those who can afford it leave the country for abortions in Texas or California. There is hope: On April 24, Mexico City's opposition legislators of the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party and the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, and smaller parties such as Alternativa, PT and Convergencia, will vote to fully legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of a woman's pregnancy (abortion is now only permitted for rape victims or when a mother's life is endangered).

This dramatic policy shift in the world's second largest Catholic nation is due, in part, to the valiant and persistent efforts of a well-organized feminist movement in Mexico. It also stems from Mexico City's liberal majority which gave same-sex unions almost all the rights of marriage last month and recently granted homosexual conjugal visits in prison. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/50841/