Abortion Law in Mexico City Versus the Rest of the Country
Mexico City legalizes abortion: Is it fleeting from the control of the Roman Catholic Church?
Monterrey: The most Expensive city in Mexico
Mexico: The Seventh Happiest Country in the World
Mexico City prepares to 'Thrill' the World
Mexico City, Free Viagra, and the Taboo of Senior Citizen Sex
Mexico City is increasingly finding itself isolated from the rest of the country. Not due to anything geographic, but due to its social liberalism.
And in this Catholic country, no issue touches emotions more passionately than abortion. And a recent change to Mexico City abortion law has lead to a culture war much more used to being fought in northern majority-Protestant America.
This issue here is this:
Since 2006, the capital city has been governed by a left-wing mayor who has liberalized abortion law. In 2007 Mexico City, with its system of federalized laws, become the second entity in Latin American to allow for abortion to be conducted (under any reason) for the first three months of pregnancy. Only Cuba had previously had such liberal laws.
This led to a backlash from conservative states:
Since the act by Mexico City, more than half of the nation's 31 states have since passed constitutional amendments defining life as beginning at conception. Thus making the abortions legal in Mexico City nothing less than an act of murder elsewhere. Many states already treat abortion as murder with long prison sentences. But as part of the backlash, four states went further and doubled the penalty for abortion if the woman is deemed of "ill repute". Abortion in these states even for legal reasons, such as rape, is incredibly difficult requiring navigation of a layered bureaucracy which make them nearly impossible. They may grow less accessible, through legal means anyway, still.
As Mexico City liberalized the rest of the more pious and conservative country grows more restrictive in a action-reverse scenario: the City's liberalizes leads to a backlash elsewhere where the law actually grows more restrictive than it otherwise would be if Mexico City maintained its more moderate laws.
So it poses a dilemma for those wanting to liberalize the capital home to roughly 1 in 5 Mexicans. There efforts to make the City more liberal may actually make things more difficulty for woman seeking abortions elsewhere. So do you trade the heart of the country for the rest of the nation? It is a difficult question.
But the cultural war rages on...
Source: The Economist.
