Abortion debate divides Mexico

But women's-rights activists are suspicious, especially since the Fox transition team on public health included until recently the secretary of health for Baja California - the state where authorities denied rape-victim Paulina the abortion that state law supposedly guaranteed her.

The Guanajuato affair "puts pressure on Fox to define where he wants to go, but his few words on it still leave us with a question mark," says Ms. Prez. "We have to wonder if he heard the vote for what it really was - a vote for change -" and not social "regression."

Paulina's case is what got the Guanajuato legislature moving. The adolescent from the northern border city of Mexicali was 13 when she was raped last year by an intruder into her home. When she became pregnant, she decided she wanted an abortion, and her mother, Mara Elena Jacinto Rauz, supported her decision. But even though the laws of Baja California allow for abortion in the case of rape, state health authorities - including health secretary Carlos Astorga Othn - pressured Paulina to change her decision, then ultimately denied her the procedure.

Mr. Astorga says state citizens have a right to life, but no right to an abortion.

As Paulina continued to push for an abortion, her case became a national cause clbre, putting abortion back in the limelight. Mexicans were reminded that even though the practice remains illegal, at least several-hundred-thousand abortions - some experts estimate more than 1 million - are performed in Mexico every year. And because so many of those are clandestine and dangerous, abortion remains the fourth-highest cause of death among Mexican women.

Mexicans also learned that not all states have equal abortion legislation. Until the Guanajuato vote, all states allowed for abortions in cases of rape. The northern border state of Chihuahua guarantees a right to life beginning at conception - a state constitutional reform approved in 1993 during a PAN government. The state of Yucatn allows a mother who already has three children to seek an abortion for subsequent pregnancies if she is unable to support additional children.

When Paulina finally gave birth in April, all Mexico knew she had a boy.

Yet while Paulina's case prompted the Guanajuato PAN legislators to take action - and even though many observers believe it was Fox's victory that emboldened the PANistas to tighten abortion laws - there are also signs the PAN does not want a national confrontation.

With even some of the PAN's national leaders calling the Guanajuato legislation a "step backward," amendments to the law - which doesn't even take effect until October - are being considered. One reform would be guaranteeing a rape victim access to adoption services.

But such changes are being called cosmetic by many critics. Appearing on national television last week, Paulina said she still supports the right of rape victims to an abortion. Although she said she now feels "love like the love of a sister" for her son, she does not think any girl or woman should be forced to live the consequences of a man's crime.

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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