News

By Gudrun Schultz

NEW YORK, United States, March 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The pro-abortion organization Human Rights Watch has continued the ongoing attack on Mexico’s laws restricting abortion by demanding that the Mexico government provide “safe and legal abortion” for victims of rape and incest.

In a document published on the group’s website entitled “The Second Assault: Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion After Rape in Mexico,” HRW demands Mexican officials “support the right to immediate unhindered access to safe, humane, respectful, and free abortion services in those cases where abortion currently is not criminalized and in accordance with human rights standards.”

In the section of the report titled “Detailed Recommendations” the group calls on the federal congress to enact laws that “ensure women access to voluntary, safe and free abortions after all forms of rape or incest.”

Despite the group’s emphasis on providing abortion for rape victims, in fact the report calls for abortion access for the general population. They call for public information campaigns that would “publicize the provision of safe and free abortion procedures where legal, including for victims of all forms of rape or incest.”

Such campaigns advertising abortion should be carried by the mass media, they say, and offered in both Spanish and all indigenous languages, in order to reach “a majority of the Mexican population.”

In the recommendations of HRW there is no provision for parental notification when a minor girl seeks an abortion. In fact, they recommend local Congresses amend or clarify existing state laws to “establish adolescents’ right to consent to medical procedures as needed to protect the best interests of the child and according to his or her evolving capacities.”

As well, the group seeks to penalize medical authorities for offering information on alternatives to abortion to rape victims, calling on health ministers to “proactively investigate and sanction all health personnel who harass or provide misleading information to rape victims or colleagues involved in provision of legal abortion services. Sanctions should include the suspension or revocation of medical licenses for repeat offenders.”

The full report can be seen here:
https://hrw.org/reports/2006/mexico0306/

See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

US Abortion Activists Forcing Abortion on Mexico through Courts
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/mar/06030808.html