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PRO-ABORTION GROUP TAKES MEXICO TO INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS BODY OVER ABORTION

MEXICO CITY, March 11, 2002 (LSN.ca) - The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, the legal arm of the U.S. pro-abortion movement, has filed a suit with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, claiming Mexico "violated the human rights" of "a 13-year-old rape victim" since she was refused an abortion. If the Commission accepts the suit and Mexico fails to barter an agreement with the Commission, CRLP is threatening to take the case to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. Rebecca Cook, CRLP board member and professor of human rights and international law at the University of Toronto, said, "This really isn't an abortion case. ... This is really a case of women's access to care to which they are legally entitled"

The case of Paulina Jacinto enraged pro-abortion groups around the world. After learning her daughter was pregnant, Paulina's mother María Elena Jacinto Raúz went to State authorities to request an abortion and was granted permission. However, doctors at the Mexicali General Hospital who were ordered to carry out the abortion refused at first and then informed the family of the possible physical and psychological consequences to Paulina of abortion. With the aid of the local Catholic diocese, Paulina decided to allow her child to live and had a son.

Publicity on the case ensued after one of the pro-abortion feminists who argued strenuously that the hospital must abort the baby was prohibited by the Catholic Church from being the godmother of the child. Silvia Reséndiz, a long-time pro-abortion advocate in Mexico befriended Paulina's family during her ordeal and was going to be the godmother of Paulina's son. However, Rev. Raúl Enríquez Ramírez, vicar general of the diocese of Mexicali took issue with Reséndiz's application to be a godmother. He said she had automatically excommunicated herself because of her pro-abortion activities, and therefore failed to meet the requirement of canon law that a godparent must set a good moral example for the child to be baptized. "She does not meet this requirement because she is against the right to life, a view she has expressed publicly for many years."

Following this, the diocese of Mexicali was given special recognition by the Vatican for its firm and decisive pro-life action. The diocesan cathedral was designated 'a cathedral of life' by the Vatican. Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragán, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Workers relayed the decision to the diocese and extended greetings from Rome to the faithful in Mexicali and praised them "for striving to keep the teen from having an abortion and deciding to have her son."

See the release from CRLP:
http://www.crlp.org/pr_02_0306paulina.html

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