Mexico City is in hay wire these days, why? Well the lawmakers have given a green signal to abortion. The proposal has immensely swayed the policies and health practices across Mexico and other parts of Roman Catholic Latin America.

The new legislation permits that the city hospitals would provide the procedure in the first trimester and does open the way for private abortion clinics. However, girls under 18 of age would have to get their parental consent for carrying out an abortion.

The procedure will be almost free for poor or the uninsured city residents, but is unlikely to attract patients from the United States, where later-term abortion is legal in many states. Under the Mexico City law, women having an abortion after 12 weeks face punishment of three to six months in jail. Those performing abortions after that period would face one to three years in jail.

The Roman Catholic Church has protested the measure and Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera led a march through the capital last month in opposition. The Archdiocese asserted that it would ‘evaluate the moral consequences of the reforms’.

Cuba and Guyana are the only countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with legalized abortion for all women. Most others allow it only in cases of rape or when the woman’s life is at risk. Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile forbid it completely.

However, statistics reveal that a majority of Mexico City residents support legalized abortions, at least in the first weeks of pregnancy.

Emotional confrontation

The proposal has created a kind of turmoil where Roman Catholic forms a bulk, for whom, abortion is a morally corrupt deed.

Opponents advocate that life begins at conception and say the law would violate the Mexican Constitution’s protection of individual rights. Supporters say the law would save the lives of thousands of women.

One aspect of abortion laws is particularly strange and distasteful — namely, the ‘except for rape and incest’ clause in some laws. Isn’t the foundation of anti-abortion law the belief that a fetus is a full-fledged human from the moment of conception? If so, how can abortion foes allow the ‘murder’ of an innocent child who just happened to be conceived through rape or incest? That’s not the child’s fault and certainly no justification for murdering it.

Effect of the proposal

Mexico’s legalization of abortion would be entirely foreseeable that American women would travel south if their own government continues to tighten restrictions on the procedure.

However, one must not forget, women those who have access to safe contraception, reproductive health care and legal abortion, the actual abortion rates are much lower than in countries where women do not have such rights.

But one must not forget, living in a society where marital statuses socially matter for every birth and the crime against life that every abortion done makes, are extreme positions that need to be reconciled.