Abortion after 12 weeks will be punishable by law, with jail sentence up to six months.
The passing of the abortion bill by Mexico City has raised a few heckles country wide. The law maker passed the bill 46 to 19. It was proposed by the leftist party. It will allow abortion by the women in the first three month of pregnancy. The law ensures that there will be free service to the poor and the uninsured. Abortion after 12 weeks will be punishable by law, with jail sentence up to six months.
This has come much to the delight of the feminist women. 'We want this law, because it means the right to choose,' said Alma Romo, who described herself as a feminist. 'Unfortunately, there are some people who do not want to grant us that right.' This will serve as a model to get abortion accepted not only nationwide, but also in Latin America and the Caribbean, where women who interrupt their pregnancies are still sent to jail,' said activist Elba Garcia, 24, who rode a flatbed truck in an abortion rights caravan through downtown Mexico City on Monday. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, the legal arm of the reproductive rights movement globally, applauded the Mexico City law as 'historic.' Decriminalizing abortion is a historic triumph, a triumph of the left,' said city legislator Jorge Diaz Cuervo, a social democrat who voted for the bill. 'Today, there is a new atmosphere in this city. It is the atmosphere of freedom.'But it has also sent alarming ripples across Mexico and even parts of Latin America which are predominantly catholic countries. The law which was passed by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party was at loggerheads with the President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party who had vehemently opposed the bill.
There was wide spread demonstrations outside the city legislature against the bill and the riot police had to called in to disperse the crowd who were shouting anti abortion slogans and playing tapes with baby crying sound. They said the fetus, three months old has taken a human form. It has a heart that beats arms and legs but can’t speak to save its life.
Though many residents supported the abortion in the first three month it has generated an emotional altercation in a predominantly catholic nation. In Mexico as well as other Latin Nation allowed legal abortion only in case of rape or in case of some complication with the pregnancy.
The bill was also opposed by the Vatican. Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in his latest string of speeches denounced abortion and euthanasia as forms of 'terrorism with a human face.' He called abortion clinics as slaughterhouses of human beings,' euthanasia, and 'parliaments of so-called civilized nations where laws contrary to the nature of the human being are being promulgated, such as the approval of marriage between people of the same sex ...' he condemned what he called 'terrorism with a human face,' and accused the media of manipulating language 'to hide the tragic reality of the facts.' For example, abortion is called 'voluntary interruption of pregnancy' and not the killing of a defenseless human being, an abortion clinic is given a harmless, even attractive, name: 'centre for reproductive health' and euthanasia is blandly called 'death with dignity'.'
The Catholic Church has decided to excommunicate those legislatures who voted for the law.
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Source-Medindia
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