Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Reproductive Rights in Mexico City
The Supreme Court of Mexico recently upheld a 2007 decision to legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in Mexico City. The following is a summary of the decision from Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/29/mexico19715.htm. Although a victory for reproductive rights, many challenges are still faced in Mexico. In the lead-up to the decision, I was made aware of the issue by hearing news about civic opposition to the bill, in this largely Catholic country. Conservative President Felipe Calderón is expected to fight further efforts to expand reproductive rights. Elsewhere in Mexico, abortion is allowed only in cases of rape, when the mother's life is in danger, or if the fetus has severe deformities.
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This is really interesting -- I had no idea what the policies were regarding reproductive rights in Mexico. In some ways the situation is similar to that in Thailand, where policies can seem more regressive than in the US, although Thailand is 90% Buddhist rather than predominantly Catholic. The resistance there seems to be a kind of residual social conservatism disconnected with the country's religious tradition, which makes it all the more hard to explain. It seems to have more to do with entrenched norms of social propriety and traditional family structure than actual opinions regarding conception and abortion.
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