Mexico City OK's early abortions

MEXICO CITY -- City legislators voted yesterday to legalize abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, an action that supporters say will serve as a landmark for women's rights in Latin America.

The legislation could result in thousands of Mexican women traveling to the nation's capital for safe and legal abortions. Catholic activists and the leaders of the conservative National Action Party, known by the Spanish acronym PAN, have promised to challenge the law in court.

"Women have self-determination over their bodies," Deputy Daniel Ordonez said as he formally introduced the bill to the city's Legislative Assembly. "They have the right to decide whether to enter into motherhood. It is a basic right, and an exclusive right of women."

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, known by the Spanish acronym PRD, has promised to sign the bill into law. The party made the legalization of abortion part of its platform in last year's regional and national elections.

Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guyana are currently the only places in Latin America to allow abortion on demand. But a subculture of illegal and often unsafe abortions exists in nearly every country in the overwhelmingly Catholic region.

The bill passed on a 46-to-19 vote despite the PAN's fierce opposition. PRD supporters said the law was meant to address a widespread and hidden public-health crisis: the deaths of thousands of women in the city each year as a result of illegal and unsafe abortions.

When the vote was completed, several abortion rights activists cheered the result.

"It's going to make an enormous difference for women in Mexico City in their everyday lives," said Lilian Sepulveda, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in New York. "This debate has shifted the focus to the realm of women's health. It's not a taboo anymore. That's progress."

A conservative-backed proposal to delay a vote on the bill and instead schedule a popular referendum on the issue was easily defeated.

"A country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people how to love," PAN deputy Jose Antonio Zepeda said. "It is teaching its citizens how to use violence to obtain what they want."

Although Mexico is an overwhelmingly Catholic country, recent polls in the daily newspapers Reforma and Excelsior showed a majority of Mexico City residents backed the legalization.

President Felipe Calderon, whose National Action Party is opposed to abortion, has distanced himself from the debate over the proposed Mexico City legislation.

Catholic legislators who favored the bill said they were being bombarded with threatening phone calls and e-mails from antiabortion activists. Church leaders have said they would excommunicate legislators who voted for the bill.

Following weeks of protests by Catholic groups against the bill, only a few hundred antiabortion demonstrators gathered outside the legislature yesterday.

Illegal abortions are widely available across Mexico, and most private hospitals quietly perform the procedure, according to women's-rights groups. But poorer women often resort to powerful herbs sold at markets, prescription medicines sold under the table by pharmacists, and surgeries performed at secretive clinics.