Mexico to pay for denied abortion
MEXICO CITY – Mexican officials said Tuesday that they will pay a legal settlement to a woman who was prevented from having an abortion after being raped at the age of 13, a decision hailed by women’s rights groups as a landmark victory.
Rape victims are the only women allowed to obtain abortions legally in Mexico if their lives are not at risk. But such women have faced innumerable bureaucratic, legal and cultural obstacles when trying to exercise that right in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.
The settlement calls for the victim to be paid about $40,000 in legal and medical fees, and reparations. The victim, who is 19 years old and raising her son as a single mother, will also receive a government education stipend for her son’s education through high school.
In addition, Mexican federal and state officials agreed to take steps to ensure that local prosecutors and health care workers comply in the future with laws that guarantee rape victims the right to abortion.
“This is a triumph for all women,” said Marta Lamas, one of Mexico’s leading feminists and founder of the nonprofit Reproductive Choice Information Group. “After six years, the government has finally acknowledged that it denied this young woman her rights.”
A spokeswoman for the Mexican Foreign Ministry confirmed Tuesday that the government had reached the agreement with the rape victim and would pay the reparations but offered no other comment.
The case of 13-year-old Paulina Ramirez, raped by a heroin addict in her Mexicali home, garnered international attention when it was first reported in 1999.
Paulina and her mother sought a legal abortion, but numerous Baja California state officials and public health care workers pressured her to carry her pregnancy to term.
Anti-abortion activists visited Paulina at the hospital, showing her pictures of aborted fetuses in a bid to persuade her to change her mind. The Baja California state attorney general personally drove her to see a priest who told her abortion was a sin.
Paulina’s son was born in 2000 and she has since raised him as a single mother. Women’s rights groups in the United States and Mexico took up the case. They sued in local courts with little success. In 2002 they filed a petition seeking redress with the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an international tribunal whose authority is recognized by Mexico.
In the agreement, the Mexican government recognized that Baja state officials violated the national law.