This week, the legislative assembly in
Mexico City
voted 46 to 19 to remove the one-to-three year prison sentence for women or girls who abort within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortions after 12 weeks are still subject to criminal penalty.
The National Action Party, which is aligned with the Catholic Church, pledged to appeal the vote to Supreme Court. Under a 1988
Vatican
ruling, anyone submitting to or practicing abortion is automatically excommunicated.
Every year, more than 500,000 Mexican women seek illegal abortions and more than 2,000 die as a result of botched procedures.
The figures are equally grim across
South America
, with four million women undergoing underground abortions annually, according to the United Nations.
Cuba
,
Guyana
and
Barbados
are the only countries in the region where abortion is legal, but new laws are being considered in both
Uruguay
and
Colombia
.
Chile
, with some of the sternest anti-abortion laws recently sanctioned the morning-after pill.
In
Mexico
, where abortion generally is illegal, rape victims have the legal right to an abortion under state criminal codes. But rape victims who seek abortions face many hurdles. As a result many rape victims resort to back-alley abortions,
Verónica Cruz Sánchez is a Mexican women's rights advocate and she's Founder and Director of Las Libres which means “The Free Women”. It's the only organization in the conservative state of Guanajuato that helps rape victims with access to safe abortions.
We spoke to Veronica while she was in was Chicago to be honored by Human Rights Watch for her humanitarian work and she told Jerome why she founded Las Libres.
(Her remarks are interpreted by Jenina Nunez.)
