Pro-choice supporters are up in arms at a move by Jalisco Governor Emilio Gonzalez to challenge a new federal law that obliges public and private hospitals to provide abortions to women who become pregnant after being raped.
This is the first time that a state governor has gone to the highest court in the land in a bid to overturn a law pertaining to public health.
Gonzalez says the law conflicts with reforms passed by the Jalisco Congress in April that affirm the state’s commitment to protect life “from conception until natural death.” The polemic new reforms were intended to insulate Jalisco from any future federal laws legalizing first-trimester abortions in Mexico.
Laws to legalize abortion have only been passed in the left-wing stronghold of Mexico City. Federal law, however, allows abortions for victims of rape in the rest of Mexico.
Gonzalez objects to a new section of the abortion law approved on April 16 that obliges hospitals to carry out out abortions for rape victims. The law states that hospitals must employ a certain number of doctors who have “no moral ojections” to performing abortions. Some 400 doctors in Mexico have already filed individual protestations saying they would refuse to perform an abortion.
Around 100 women and supporters of the left-wing Social Democratic Party protested the move outside the state governor’s Palace on Tuesday.
The governor’s position is purely ideological and another example of the state trampling on the rights of women, said Areceli Prieto, a representative of Red por los Derechos Sexuales en Jalisco.
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