Mexico Cracks Down on Illegal Abortion
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When Mexico City decriminalized abortion in 2007, pro-choicers took it as a sign of great things to come, possibly including a nationwide liberalizing of abortion laws. Unfortunately, as Mary Cuddehe reports in the Atlantic, the Catholic Church and general sexist establishment reacted with outrage and doubled down on the war against women who want to control when they have children. Since then, 14 Mexican states have passed laws defining personhood as starting at conception, with some even going so far as to ban IUDs while they were at it. The result is that women have been going to jail for obtaining illegal abortions.
Though the anti-choice lobby in Mexico is as adept at affecting a love of fetal life as the anti-choice lobby in the United States, the largely anti-sex, misogynist underpinnings of anti-choice beliefs speak loudly through the laws. As Cuddehe reports, the state of Jalisco even adjusts a woman's sentence for abortion depending on her reputation and whether or not she had sex outside of marriage. And just like in the United States, anti-choicers dance around the issue of what to do with women who do abort. Officials in Guanajuato claim no woman has gone to jail for abortion, but pro-choice activists in the state say dozens have. It also seems that women who spontaneously miscarry also run into danger from suspicious doctors. Already a Mayan woman in Quintana Roo has been brought up on homicide charges for a termination she claims was spontaneous.
Complications and even death from illegal abortion in Mexico are a serious public health concern, and 62 percent of Mexicans believe that abortion should be legal. So why is this even happening? Much to most of the blame can be laid at the doorstep of the Catholic Church, which has chosen Latin America in general as the major front in their war against women. As Michelle Goldberg noted in my podcast interview with her, the Catholic Church has decided the best way to keep the flock faithful is to go after the abortion issue like a rabid dog. When you hear cases like the 9-year-old rape victim in Brazil seeking abortion, it's often because the Church seeks these extreme cases out and makes a stink out of forcing the girl in question to give birth. These cases work to show the extremes the Church is willing to go in its beliefs about mandatory childbirth, even as the rest of the world stands by and says, "Really? A 9-year-old?"
And in Mexico, women are learning how eager the Church is to run over them to prove its patriarchal bona fides. All the sentimental rhapsodizing about fetal life hasn't stopped an estimated 875,000 a year from seeking abortion (in a country with a third of our population). Off-label and black market use of the ulcer medication Cytotec is a popular method, since its main ingredient misoprostol can induce abortion. The problem is that using the drug this way can cause severe bleeding and uterine rupture, and indeed, 18 percent of the women seeking abortion in 2006 in Mexico were hospitalized for complications. But as the women of Mexico are learning, their health and well-being don't amount to much when their bodies can be used as a battleground for the war against modernity.
Comments
content free snarking
By: lorikay4 | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 16:12
Ok, CeeBeeSart, exactly what mistakes does the author make here? You are also not impressing us by 'parachuting in', making a few dismissive remarks, and then leaving, without telling us what specifically the author got wrong.
When governments do terrible things to men, we call that political -- oppression, terrorism, dictatorship. When governments and communities do terrible things to WOMEN, it is called 'cultural', thus marking the actions in question as off limits for criticism and discussion, and labeling all the critics as outsiders whose opinions are irrelevant and unwelcome outside interference.
If women are being jailed for abortions and even for miscarriages, if women's sentences for these 'offences' are colored by sexist judgments of whether the woman was a good girl or not -- those are political, not cultural, actions. And I don't have to know anything about the finer points of Mexican religious practices or culture to call it wrong.
Silk handkerchief commentary, maybe?
By: CeeBeeSart | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 14:09
Is there a writing equivalent of television news' "parachute journalism?"
You know, when a journalist drops into a culture or place they've never been before, takes a millisecond to look around and then starts reporting as if they'd been there forever and understand all the nuances of the place?
I think Amanda Marcotte did a wonderful job here of Wiki'ing some trivia, mushing things together with her preconceived notions of Mexico and then pretending to understand how the country works. Why, I bet she's even been there for Spring Break or shopping in bordertowns once or twice!
Unfortunately, as someone who DOES live in Mexico, I can spot about four enormous cultural errors she has made in this piece of writing right off the bat. And if she can't spot them herself, and they made them into print, that's just laughably sad. She's definitely no expert on what's happening in Mexico right now, and it's therefore impossible to take any point she's trying to make in her commentary seriously.
I DO like thoughtful opinion pieces. I do not like inexpert conjecture passed off as authority.
How Appalling
By: morgaine2005 | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 13:07
As a former Roman Catholic, I know that the Catholic Church can be a bit, shall we say, strident on the topic of abortion, but this slew of stories from Latin America makes me sick to my stomach. How can any church which claims to be the earthly representative of a loving God support policies that cause so much egregious and unnecessary suffering?
If they want to try to reduce the need for abortions, fine, I will get right behind you on that. But jailing women who miscarry isn't the way to do it. Nor is persecuting women who just want to gain control of their bodies and their lives.
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and all that.
And on the pro-life/anti-choice question ... some people do manage to take their pro-life stance farther than just opposing abortion. (My mother, for instance, is anti-abortion and anti-death-penalty. The Catholic Church is also opposed to the death penalty for what it's worth.) But since most anti-aboriton advocates aren't all that into protecting and preserving life once it's here ... yeah, anti-choice is probably the better name.
Accuracy over feelings
By: Amanda Marcotte | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 12:22
As much as people who wish to ban abortion and often birth control would like to be called by a self-serving name, I don't like "pro-life", because it's inaccurate. As this above story demonstrates, they are perfectly happy with policies that kill women and orphan children. They aren't "pro-life". The only people supporting life are those of us who support smart health policy, such as legal and safe abortion.
I don't think so, Bmortimer...
By: nagatuki | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 12:16
Funny, my initial reaction to this piece was "Finally! Someone calling them exactly what they are: anti-choice."
I won't cuss here, but I don't give a @#$@# what you like to be called, or what "they" like to be called.
Anti-choice people have garnered a nice little market for themselves by labeling themselves "pro-life," when in reality they are ANTI-CHOICE.
Pro-choice people want life as well, so it's a stupid, illogical moniker. The problem with anti-choice people is they don't care that "life" can mean the well-being of the mother, or frankly of a child that could be born into a circumstance that leads to its death anyway (see dumpster babies, murdered toddlers like Caylee, etc).
The debate is ugly because anti-choice people make it so; if they could mind their own business when it comes to women's reproductive health it wouldn't _be_ a debate, and dismissing it as some sort of "feminist" slur won't work here (did you forget what site you're on?).
Nope, sorry.
By: lorikay4 | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 12:07
Anti-choice is your label, get used to it. Unless you can convince me that everyone who wants abortion to be illegal also pickets the army recruiting office and lives vegetarian and actively opposes capital punishment, it's going to stay anti-choice, not the specious 'pro-life'. We have no obligation to participate in the self-marketing program of the anti-choice movement.
Also, the thing that makes this argument vitriolic isn't the fact that we won't fill out your nametags the way you like, it's the firebombing of clinics and bullying and screaming at teenagers trying to buy birth control at a Planned Parenthood office. And the sneering dismissive 'whore of Babylon' treatment from woman-hating pharmacists who dispense morning after pills with condescension and hostility, if they are dispensing them at all.
First, let me say the
By: bmortimer | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 11:16
First, let me say the situation in Mexico is awful. That said: abortion opponents call themselves "pro-life" not "anti-choice." The feminist insistence to cling to using the "anti-choice" moniker for abortion opponents is a disservice to an already heated and ugly debate. Please stop doing it.