Human Rights Watch Denounces Barriers to Abortion Matthew Cullinan Hoffman - LifeSiteNews.com
go to original July 12, 2012

“Human Rights Watch,” a pro-abortion lobbying group funded by billionaire activist George Soros, is asking the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to condemn Mexico for failing to remove “barriers” to abortion.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) complains that the abortion rate in Mexico’s states is low because states do not have streamlined procedures for approving abortion in rape cases, while doctors are unwilling to do the procedure, according to the leftist news service CIMAC.

Abortion, which is illegal in all of Mexico’s 31 states, is exempt from punishment in certain rare cases, including rape. However, the procedure is rarely carried out due to widespread opposition to killing unborn children, a fact that stokes the ire of Amanda Klasing, a researcher in HRW’s “women’s rights” division.

Women in Mexico’s states “are confronted with excessively complicated procedures, illegal delays, lack of information or biased information, and indimidation by the health sector,” complains Klasing in a document submitted to the CEDAW, and quoted by CIMAC.

Klassing also expresses regret that 17 Mexican states have passed right-to-life amendments to their constitutions in recent years, which “exacerbate the barriers that women and girls encounter in access to legal abortion,” according to CIMAC.

Mexico needs to remove “stigma” attached to abortion, says HRW

Klasing’s list of perceived offenses against the practice of abortion in Mexico are virtually identical to those listed by HRW in a 2006 report called “Victims twice over: Obstructions to legal abortion for rape in Mexico.”  In addition to urging a streamlining of the abortion approval process, HRW complained that the government was doing nothing to eliminate the “stigma” attached to abortion.

“The inability of public functionaries to adequately address the stigma attached to abortion and rape has contributed to perpetuate the generalized intimidation of rape victims and even health professions, even where access to abortion for rape is supposedly guaranteed by codified procedures,” wrote HRW.

As an example, the group cited a pro-abortion activist who complained: “In the public hospital, you will see what they say to women... ‘If [the aborted fetus] weighs more than 500 grams, you will need a casket.’... They even make them wait ... There are even [medical] residents who yell at doctors [who carry out abortions]: ‘Murderer’ etc.”

HRW also expressed its concern that generalized pro-life sentiment in Mexico was so strong that doctors felt the need to hide their identity as abortionists, and lamented the fact that women could not have their unborn babies killed if they were conceived through underage sexual activity or incest.

In its complaint to CEDAW, Human Rights Watch is seeking to up the pressure on Mexico to loosen abortion restrictions by enlisting an influential ally of the international abortion lobby.

CEDAW claims that the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women, an agreement signed by Mexico decades ago, requires the legalization of abortion.

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