MEXICO CITY (AFP) - Mexico's Supreme Court ordered the release on Wednesday of a woman who served seven years in jail for aborting a child illegally, saying she did not receive due process.
The high court said Ms Adriana Manzanares, an indigenous Tlapaneca who does not speak Spanish, was freed after conviction "due to several violations of due process, including the lack of an interpreter who spoke her language and understood her culture and worldview".
The attorney who helped secure her release was not immediately available for comment.
Local media reported that Ms Manzanares had been sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2006 after authorities said she illegally aborted her fetus late in her pregnancy.
When Mexico City’s law changed in 2007, allowing elective abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, it was a substantial victory for reproductive rights advocates in a country, and a region, where the Catholic Church dominates daily life. Across Latin America, access to legal abortion is a rarity, and in 2007, all eyes turned to Mexico City to see how the experiment would play out—and whether it could be replicated. To date, only Uruguay has followed Mexico City in liberalizing its abortion law, and this June, the world watched as El Salvador denied a lifesaving abortion to a woman known as Beatriz for five months before finally allowing a c-section delivery for the nonviable fetus.
After decriminalization, however, a fierce backlash unfurled across Mexico. In the first three years, half of the country’s 31 provinces passed new constitutional amendments enshrining abortion bans—two of which were just upheld by Mexico’s Supreme Court this May. As a result of the amendments passed after 2007 in 18 Mexican states, women in the provinces are increasingly being prosecuted for “attempted abortion,” often reported by hospital staff when they seek help after self-abortions, unsupervised use of the medical abortion drug misoprostol, or unsafe back-alley terminations.
Regina Tames, a lawyer and executive director of the reproductive rights advocacy group GIRE (Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida), worked with several of the dozens of women being prosecuted for attempted abortion in 2012. If convicted, some of these women could face up to six years in jail, while others would be sentenced to fines or community service. Many were already condemned in their communities after newspapers printed their pictures and identified them as criminals and baby killers.
Katia’s experience would be nothing out of the ordinary in heartland America, where CPCs have been a fixture since the 1960s. What’s new is that this model has been exported to Mexico, where anti-abortion groups have established more than 40 CPCs in recent years.
Frequently posing as medical facilities, and often located right next door to actual abortion clinics, CPCs function by attracting women with free pregnancy tests and implied offers of abortion services, only to ambush them with graphic videos, intensive anti-abortion coercion, and strategic misinformation. (Some in the United States have even been sanctioned for fraud.) Now, thanks to the expanding reach of American evangelical and Catholic anti-abortion activists, CPCs are becoming important players in the abortion debates overseas, in countries as varied as Ethiopia, Israel, Serbia, and South Africa. Mexico is just one of the 47 nations where Heartbeat International, an anti-abortion network based in Ohio, now has partner centers. Heartbeat International, which represents more than 1,000 similar centers in the United States and 1,800 groups worldwide, has partnered with a Spanish-language website to track and promote Mexican CPCs as well. In fact, it was Heartbeat International’s website that had listed the Mexico City CPC that Katia—who was actually my translator—visited.
Women who go with the CAM volunteers are likely to experience the same protocol that has been extensively documented in the United States. They are shown graphic videos about how aborted fetuses cry for their mothers. They are given a letter to read “from a fetus,” forgiving its mother for aborting. They are invited to stay with the CAM’s partner maternity home.
No, my point is that it is your right to choose to have a surgery performed on you and your choice determines whether I live or I die. Do you think I should be able to take your kidney by force if I need it?
I'm saying it's a ridiculous hypothetical question.
In an ideal world, abortion would be safe, legal, and very rare.
The funny thing about the whole notion of "choosing life" is that no one on the pro choice side of the debate wants to take away that right.
Since when does choosing life remove someone's right to keep theirs?
There are some difficult choices that have to made sometimes. That those times are rare, is a blessing.
The theme of this years march was Adoption:The Noble Decision
My arguement against Same Sex Adoption is from Biology. Why shold we allow a group of people who cannot and it is impossible for them to produce children? It is a biological fact that Homosexual couples together are incapable of producing children together. It is only by hetrosexual sex that one can produce children. By my definition, that would disallow single people to adopt because you cannot produce children by yourself. So according to biology it should only be allowed that those who are capable of producing children the biological method.
If it was my choice, I would choose to save your life, even if it meant loosing mine.
Perhaps Darkflight hates life and if given the choice would have been aborted? It was just a simple question only looking for a simple answer. I am just seeing how far he is willing to argue his own existence. He seems dead set on not allowing other's their existence. If it is just about the money, then I don't care to be in the debate either.
As an unmarried homosexual who is literally hated by many fundamentalist Christians, perhaps George Michael wasn't referring to sex in the Biblical sense.
That's totally not the topic here. Do you think that if someone needs a kidney, the goverment should take one from a fitting donator, by force, if necessary?
See, it's this kind of stuff that makes this entire discussion worthless. I have never had an abortion, and I have never in any way encouraged/forced/suggested or even talked to anyone about having an abortion. The only times I have talked about abortion are in discussions where abortion is the topic such as this.
You are simply attacking my opinions and personality without presenting any arguement about abortion at all. The question is not how I or anyone else feels about abortion, the question is is there any rational reason why abortion shouldn't be available to those who choose to take that option.
The Choose Life movement wants young women to carry their baby until birth and then adopt it away, which sounds really great but has its own set of problems. The problem with having children isn't always the upbringing. A pregnancy can be problematic for school and work. There is risks of the mother having problems with seperating from the child and either ending up having psychological problems if she does give the child away or she might end up keeping it in situations where it is not a good idea for a women to have a child. What if the women doesn't have health insurance? And so on.
The government's involvement especially forcing people to give up something is not either is it?That's totally not the topic here. Do you think that if someone needs a kidney, the goverment should take one from a fitting donator, by force, if necessary?
As an unmarried homosexual who is literally hated by many fundamentalist Christians, perhaps George Michael wasn't referring to sex in the Biblical sense.
What an unusual spokesperson for the anti-abortionists...
I see, your dogded the question three times. Whatever.