On August 28, Mexico’s Supreme Court, by an 8-3 vote, upheld as constitutional the decriminalization of abortion.

The law, passed in 2007 by the Mexico City Legislative Assembly, decriminalized abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The law also defined a pregnancy as beginning upon implantation and required public health centers in Mexico City to provide abortion information and free services, with an opt-out for doctors with a conscientious objection. With this law, Mexico City joined Puerto Rico, Cuba and Guyana in the Hemisphere as having decriminalized abortion in the first trimester.

The law was immediately challenged by the pro-criminalization forces in Mexican society, as violating the right to life as set forth in the Mexican Constitution. The decision, finding that it did not, was a constitutionally limited one, unlike the broader Roe v. Wade decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973. The Roe decision found that in the U.S. Constitution there was a right to privacy that required that abortion be decriminalized before fetal viability. The Mexican Court held that the Mexican Constitution permitted, but did not require, the state legislatures of the nation to decriminalize, or criminalize, abortion. One judge said, “It is not up to the Supreme Court to legalize or criminalize abortion.” With this decision as precedent, other states in Mexico can decriminalize abortion should they choose to do so.

The Mexico City abortion law addresses a catastrophic public health problem: unsafe abortion. There are estimates that there are between 500,000 and 1 million unsafe abortions a year in Mexico, with approximately 100,000 annual abortion-related hospital admissions. From 1990 to 2005, 21,646 women in Mexico died of maternal related causes, with abortion accounting for 537. These figures are probably understated given the illegality of the procedure. Since the decriminalization, there has been one death from abortion in Mexico City.

Additional maternal deaths in the past were in no doubt caused by lack of access to family planning services, which would have delayed pregnancies until the woman was older, spaced out a woman’s pregnancies and reduced the absolute number of pregnancies, thereby reducing the risk of death in childbirth. It was heartening to see that 58% of women seeking abortions in Mexico City ask for an IUD after their abortion to prevent their next pregnancy. Abortion decriminalization must be part of a broad public health plan to bring reproductive health care services to young, poor, indigenous, rural and uninsured women, who otherwise do not have access. About 40% of pregnancies worldwide are unintended. It is these pregnancies that result in unsafe abortion and maternal mortality and morbidity. This can be prevented only by simultaneously attacking gender inequality, gender violence, lack of information and access to contraceptive services, lack of an appropriate contraceptive method for every woman at every stage of her reproductive life, and, finally, the stigma that women face in many cultures in trying to control their bodies and their lives. A big agenda, but Mexico has shown that we can tackle it.

Alexander C. Sanger is the grandson of Margaret Sanger, who founded the birth control movement over eighty years ago. Sanger is currently Chair International Planned Parenthood Council.
His book, Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century, is reviewed and can be purchased on his website: www.alexandersanger.com

by Various Authors
Translated by James Suggett

The International Conference on Political Economy: Responses from the South to the World Economic Crisis took place in Caracas, Venezuela from October 8-11, 2008, and was attended by academics and researchers from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, South Korea, Cuba, Ecuador, Spain, the United States, the Philippines, France, England, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The conference promoted a broad debate about the current economic and financial situation of the world, and about the new perspectives and challenges of the governments of southern peoples in the face of the international crisis.

The situation has worsened in the last few weeks. After repeated crises in the financial markets of a few central countries, it has quickly converted into an international crisis of enormous proportions. This places the countries of the South in a compromised position.

The crisis threatens the real economy. If energetic, effective, and immediate actions are not taken, it could bring overwhelming punishments upon the people of the world, particularly the sectors that are already the most vulnerable and left behind.

Today, the vulnerability of currencies, financial imbalances, and grave recessions reveal the neo-liberal myth about the benefits of market deregulation and the solidity and trustworthiness of the existing financial institutions, and they seriously put into question the foundation of the capitalist system.

The contributions presented during this conference have put into perspective the process of the crisis as it unraveled since August 2007, and the failure of the concessions, bailout packages, and bribes by way of state intervention in developed capitalist countries, measures which aim to save the remnants of an already dislocated world financial system.

We denounce the pretension to take on our shoulders the cost of financial bailout packages on the collective world system, which would worsen the situation of poverty, unemployment, and exploitation of workers and the people of the world.

Neither the gigantic state intervention that we have observed in the last few weeks to save disarticulated entities emptied by speculation, nor the massive increase in the public debt are plausible alternatives to solve the crisis. The current dynamic encourages a new round of concentration of capital, and if firm opposition from the people does not exist, the perverse restructuring which saves only the privileged sectors will be emphasized even more.

That could also bring the return of the dangerous authoritarian tendencies in the functioning of capitalism, a regressive sign of which is already apparent in the increase in discrimination and racism toward the immigrant population from southern countries in countries of the North.

If we maintain the current policies for restructuring the capitalist system, there will be enormous productive and social costs that could threaten environmental sustainability even more.

The need to re-construct the international economic and financial architecture is unavoidable today. With this perspective, the need for a post-capitalist outlet is evident, and Venezuela has named it Socialism of the Twenty-First Century. read more