A few hours before she was supposed to get ready for school, Maria woke up in a nauseous, fevered panic. Just after midnight, she’d slipped out of the room she shared with her mother and taken abortion pills she’d bought from a girl at the mall. The four white, hexagonal pills came loosely wrapped in a piece of paper like some illicit party drug. That had seemed suspicious to Maria, but the girl swore she had used them herself. Nobody else knew that Maria was pregnant—least of all her mother asleep in the next bed. She was 18, single, and paying her own way through private high school. She was scared, and now she was sick.
All across Mexico, young women like Maria (who asked that her last name not be used) are caught in a growing backlash against first-trimester abortions. Until two years ago, abortion at any stage was considered a crime throughout the country, with exemptions in all states for rape and in some for fetal defects or endangerment to the mother. (There are no federal laws governing abortion.) Women’s rights groups have fought these stringent laws for decades, pointing to the health risks and arguing for reproductive rights. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 18% of the 875,000 Mexican women who sought abortions in 2006 were hospitalized for complications.
In April 2007, Mexico City decriminalized first-trimester abortion within city limits. Pro-choice groups rejoiced, but the Catholic Church, which has a dominant presence in this secular country, sounded the alarm. Conservative leaders asked the Supreme Court to overturn the law. The nation watched the case closely, and in a rare act of transparency, the Supreme Court televised six public hearings in the spring of 2008. Opponents of the law, who hailed largely from the church and President Felipe Calderón’s National Action Party (PAN), argued vehemently against first-trimester abortion, and Ingrid Tapia, a lawyer for a conservative women’s group, stole the show when she addressed the court in a low-slung black dress. “Is it legitimate,” she rasped, her violet eye shadow and matching fake nails glinting, “for a mother’s liberty to supersede a child’s right to life?”
2010-08-17
Mexico's Abortion Wars - Magazine - The Atlantic
via theatlantic.com
