Mexican lawmakers consider stripping parental rights, allowing abortion until birth

Mexican lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy using what one group is calling “legislative traps.”

According to Catholic News Agency, the draft opinion would allow women to “freely request safe abortion services to terminate their pregnancy during the first full 12 weeks of the gestation process.” It would also allow abortion “at any time” in cases such as “when it has been diagnosed that the product [sic] has genetic or congenital defects.” Finally, the bill would allow anyone age 13 or older to get an abortion without her parents’ permission, since “the request made by the adolescent will be sufficient.”

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The proposal, which is being spearheaded by senators Malú Micher, Olga Sánchez Cordero, and Patricia Mercado, is currently being considered by the Joint Committees for Gender Equality, Health, and Legislative Studies,

It has been blasted by the pro-family group Red Familia, which also warns that should the legislation pass, healthcare workers “will be obliged to provide” abortions.

“As if that were not enough,” the group said in a statement shared on X, “the right to conscientious objection of medical personnel is effectively annulled and in matters of sexual and reproductive health adolescents are left outside the care and protection of their parents.”

The group continued,  “We cannot allow death to be promoted in our country, we cannot allow our right to educate and to know the comprehensive health of our children to be taken away, we cannot allow medical personnel to be prevented from exercising their freedom of conscience. This bill is a Megalodon that foments death and completely forgets the true needs of our country.”

In September, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that abortion should be decriminalized. However, the ruling didn’t immediately change the widespread status of abortion, and it remains illegal in many of the country’s states.

This proposal would change five federal laws pertaining to abortion in the country.