January 18, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Mexico’s Federal Institute for Access to Information and the Protection of Personal Data (IFAI) has ordered Mexico’s federal prosecutorial wing to begin tracking the number of women in Mexico who have been imprisoned for abortion, according to local media sources.
The General Procurator of the Republic (PGR), which prosecutes criminal cases at the federal level, has responded that it does not have the information, and suggested to the IFAI that it obtain the information from state governments, which are charged with prosecuting such cases.
However, the IFAI has issued an opinion indicating that the PGR had not made a sufficient effort to seek out the information , and must do so in compliance with the IFAI request.
The effort to record the number of women incarcerated for killing their unborn children represents a new phase in a growing consensus in the country in favor of eliminating criminal penalties for abortions.
The trend against imprisonment was given a strong impetus when pro-abortion groups began to publicize the cases of several women imprisoned in the state of Guanajuato for having had “spontaneous abortions.”
Although the women had all given birth in the third trimester and had been convicted of infanticide, the murder of their newborn children, the country’s media repeated the claim that the women had been imprisoned “for abortion.” The state’s governor soon capitulated to demands for their release.
Mexico’s political and media elites are increasingly united in their opposition to penalizing abortion, and even some pro-life groups have begun to agree to the elimination of criminal penalties, even for the doctors who perform the deadly procedure.