Pro-life group denounces attempt to allow abortion for all nine months throughout Mexico

ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 17, 2023 / 19:10 pm (CNA).

In an Oct. 15 press release posted on X, the Mexican platform Red Familia (Family Network) denounced a bill that seeks to open “the door to abortion up to nine months” of pregnancy throughout Mexico using “legislative traps.”

The draft opinion, which will be discussed in the Joint Committees for Gender Equality, Health, and Legislative Studies on Wednesday, is promoted by a group of senators from the political parties Morena and Citizens Movement, among them Malú Micher, Olga Sánchez Cordero, and Patricia Mercado. The legislation seeks to change more than 70 articles in five federal laws specifically regarding abortion in Mexico.

The initiative seeks to allow women in the entire country to “freely request safe abortion services to terminate their pregnancy during the first full 12 weeks of the gestation process.” It also proposes that from the 13th week of pregnancy onward this procedure can be requested “at any time” in cases such as “when it has been diagnosed that the product [sic] has genetic or congenital defects.”

The bill also establishes that from the age of 13 it is not necessary to obtain the consent of parents or guardians to undergo an abortion, since “the request made by the adolescent will be sufficient.”

Red Familia criticized this proposal, arguing that, instead of addressing the country’s most pressing needs, especially those related to violence, it focuses on the legalization of abortion. In addition, the organization pointed out that this practice would become a basic health service that all public health institutions “will be obliged to provide.”

“As if that were not enough,” warns the Mexican pro-life platform, with some of its provisions “the right to conscientious objection of medical personnel is effectively annulled and in matters of sexual and reproductive health (abortion and contraception) adolescents are left outside the care and protection of their parents.”

Red Familia criticized that these legislators, “involved in personal and ideological commitments,” have been promoting public policies that “attack the lives of their daughters and sons” for years.

The pro-life group called on “sensible” legislators so that this initiative is “eliminated in its entirety.”

“We cannot allow death to be promoted in our country, we cannot allow our right to educate and to know the comprehensive health of our children to be taken away, we cannot allow medical personnel to be prevented from exercising their freedom of conscience. This bill is a Megalodon [a species of giant prehistoric shark] that foments death and completely forgets the true needs of our country,” Red Familia stated.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.