WUNRN
MEXICO - PRESIDENT WANTS CHANGE IN
ABORTION STANCE UNDER TREATY
September 27, 2011 - Mexico City – President Felipe
Calderon has asked the Senate to scrap a commitment Mexico made when
it signed the Pact of San Jose on Human Rights in 1981 to not take on the
obligation of enacting legislation to protect life from conception.
The president's proposal to the Senate comes as
the Supreme
Court begins reviewing the constitutionality of reforms implemented in two
states on the protection of life from conception, opening the way for the
criminalization of abortion.
Calderon contends that a withdrawal from the
Interpretive Declaration of the San Jose Pact would allow Mexico to endorse a
"commitment to the right to life as a legal right protected under Mexican
law," the Office of the President said in a statement.
The American Convention on Human Rights, also
known as the Pact of San Jose, was adopted on Nov. 22, 1969, and holds that
laws will generally protect the right to life from the time of conception and
that no one will be deprived of life arbitrarily.
Mexico signed the treaty in 1981 with the
provision that becoming a signatory "does not constitute an obligation to
legislate to protect life" from conception and made it clear that
"States reserve the right to have exceptions in their legislation, such as
is the case with determining responsibility in abortion cases."
Calderon asked the Senate to take up the change in
stance in accordance with the June 10 constitutional reforms, which recognize
human rights protected in international treaties and the Mexican Constitution.
The Supreme Court on Monday began examining the
constitutionality of reforms in the states of Baja California and San Luis
Potosi that establish a right to life from conception.