Mexico Supreme Court Expected To Rule Mexico City's Abortion Rights Law Constitutional

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Medical Malpractice / Litigation
Article Date: 29 Aug 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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The majority of Mexico's 11 Supreme Court justices have said that Mexico City's law allowing unrestricted abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy does not violate the country's constitution, making it likely that the court will uphold the measure, the New York Times reports.

The court earlier this week began deliberations on a legal challenge to the law, which was filed by the conservative federal government of President Felipe Calderon one month after the law was approved by the Mexico City legislature. The justices are expected to vote on the issue Thursday. To overturn the law, eight justices would need to vote against it; however, that "looks unlikely" as eight justices have said they support the law, according to the Times.

Jose Ramon Cossio Diaz, one of the eight judges who spoke in support of the law, said that "by decriminalizing abortion, women are free to decide over their bodies, their physical and mental health, and even their lives." Magistrate Mariano Azuela, one of the two justices who spoke against the law, said that life begins at conception and that "a woman in some way has to live with the phenomenon of becoming pregnant. When she does not want to keep the product of the pregnancy, she still has to suffer the effects during the whole period."

According to the Times, a ruling upholding the law would be a "setback" for the federal government (Malkin, New York Times, 8/28). London's Guardian reports that the law "has shattered the longstanding suppression" of the abortion-rights debate in Mexico, where politicians and bishops have avoided the issue for decades because they "fear[ed] exposing bitter divisions in a country that values its anticlerical political tradition as deeply as its Catholic heritage." However, the issue of abortion rights has become an "unprecedented national debate" since the approval of the Mexico City law, the Guardian reports (Tuckman, Guardian, 8/28).

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