Mexico City Abortion Foes Vow Action
By MARK STEVENSON
MEXICO CITY – Abortion foes vowed Saturday to print posters bearing the names of Mexico City lawmakers who voted to legalize the procedure while uncertainty lingered over whether doctors at city-run hospitals could refuse to perform them.
Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said that doctors at city-run hospitals could not refuse to perform the procedure because of moral objections, apparently contradicting earlier statements by the city’s health secretary.
"We have to serve the public, that is what the law orders us to do," Ebrard told reporters on Friday.
On Saturday, abortion opponent Guillermo Bustamante of the National Union of Parents told government news agency Notimex that his group planned to display posters with photographs and names of city legislators who voted to legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in a campaign to get the law overturned. The pictures would be next to a photo of an aborted fetus.
The law, which was approved on Tuesday, applies only to city-run hospitals in Mexico City and would not require doctors in federal hospitals or private clinics to perform abortions. It opens the way, however, for private clinics to perform them.
Ebrard, whose leftist Democratic Revolution Party supported the law, did not indicate whether doctors who refused to perform abortions would be asked to resign.
Mexico City Health Secretary Manuel Mondragon on Thursday said doctors could not be forced to perform abortions that strictly are elective.
The text of the law does not address whether city doctors can refuse to perform the procedure.
Abortion in the case of rape, severe deformity of the fetus or if the mother’s health is at risk has long been legal in Mexico, and doctors have been required to perform them under those circumstances, although some have defied the law.
The city apparently is still working out the procedural details of the measure, the first of its kind in Mexico. Ebrard said a list was being drawn up of facilities that would offer the service.