State’s Liberalized Abortion Law Sets Off Debate in Mexico : Latin America: Catholics lead barrage of criticism over measure in Chiapas that expands right to choose.

The Mexican state of Chiapas, a traditional province with a large Indian population and strong Roman Catholic roots, has quietly adopted the nation’s most liberal abortion law.

So quiet was the Chiapas legislature’s decision to legalize abortion upon demand two months ago that few residents realized such a law had been passed until it was published and put into effect Dec. 16.

But the vote to adopt Gov. Patrocinio Gonzalez Garrido’s proposed reform of the state criminal code has set off a nationwide debate on abortion and a barrage of criticism from Catholic leaders, who threatened to excommunicate legislators who supported the measure.

They also have called on President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to overturn the state law “before this degenerates into a national sickness.”

Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant leaders are supporting protest marches in Chiapas this month and next month organized by the antiabortion group Pro-Vida, according to state residents.

“This is absurd, a stupidity,” Bishop Genaro Alamilla, a spokesman for the Mexican Bishops Conference, told reporters in Mexico City. “There is no valid reason for suppressing human life. Animals respect the life of their progeny. The governor and members of the legislature have put themselves below animals.”

In an interview with the newspaper La Jornada published Friday, Interior Secretary Fernando Gutierrez Barrios called the Chiapas vote “a sovereign decision” and said a national dialogue is warranted to determine whether to change Mexico’s federal abortion law.

The Mexican federal criminal code prohibits abortion, except in cases of rape and when the mother’s life is endangered. In practice, it is extremely difficult to obtain a legal abortion, because the law does not specify who must authorize the procedure or who may perform it.

A few states are more lenient, with laws allowing for abortions of deformed fetuses and, in Yucatan, for economic hardship. The Chiapas law goes furthest in permitting abortion for “reasons of family planning or by common agreement of the parents” within 90 days of conception.

Gov. Gonzalez Garrido said in an interview with Proceso magazine that “the religious debate should be between those who, under the law, decide to abort or not to abort. The law does not encourage (women) to abort but makes it possible for them, with freedom of conscience, to decide whether or not to do so.”

While Pro-Vida and the right-of-center National Action Party attacked the new law, feminist groups lauded it as a historic advance for women in Mexico.

“This is not an attempt against the life of anyone,” said Walda Barrios, of Anzetik, a women’s group in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. “It is simply an extreme necessity that women may abort legally and not as delinquents. . . . This doesn’t mean women will be aborting every minute. But it is an option in extreme cases.”

Guadalupe Cardenas, of Women of San Cristobal de las Casas, added: “This will allow for abortions under more secure conditions. It is an undeniable reality that there are unwanted pregnancies and women who, as a last resort, turn to abortion. This law will mean that abortions will no longer be a cause of death.”

Health experts disagree about the number of illegal or clandestine abortions performed in Mexico each year. Estimates range from 800,000 to 2 million, with an unknown number of deaths resulting from unsanitary and inexpert operations.

The cost of an illegal abortion in Chiapas is $680 to $2,000, according to Barrios. Doctors in Chiapas noted that middle-class women, usually married and often members of the Catholic Church, are the ones who most often can afford an abortion.

How the new abortion law came about in Chiapas is a mystery to most political observers. Gonzalez Garrido told Proceso that he acted at the urging of organizations defending women’s rights, but the feminist groups said they had never petitioned him to legalize abortion.

Some analysts speculated that Gonzalez Garrido may have initiated the abortion law at President Salinas’ behest as a trial balloon for national abortion reform.

Gonzalez Garrido is a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which holds a majority in the legislature that approved the law.

The PRI, however, does not stand to make any obvious political gains in a state with a liberal intellectual elite, but also with a large population of Indians and peasants who are heavily influenced by the conservative Catholic and Protestant churches. The party won the 1988 presidential election in Chiapas handily, largely with the votes of this conservative base.

“Maybe the PRI imagined this was the state to experiment, to see the reaction,” said Dr. Jesus Gilberto Gomez Maza, a pediatrician who ran for governor against Gonzalez Garrido in 1988. “They dropped this little bomb to see what happens, and depending on the response, they will act in other states or not.”

Gomez opposes abortion, although he noted that Chiapas has a 5% annual population growth rate--nearly twice the national rate. He acknowledged that sex education and family planning are difficult in such a poor state, where the average level of education is three years of primary school and the illiteracy rate is 40%.

“Independent of morality or ideology, what I object to is that no one was consulted on this law,” Gomez said in a telephone interview. “It was approved by legislators who don’t understand pregnancy and abortion and did not consult the public opinion in general.”

The measure’s harshest criticism, however, has come from the Catholic Church. Although Protestants have made great inroads in Mexico, and particularly Chiapas, most people in the country still are professed Catholics.

Salinas has vowed to modernize the government’s relationship with the church, which has no legal standing under the Mexican constitution. He broke with tradition by inviting bishops to his inauguration and received Pope John Paul II earlier this year during the pontiff’s Mexico visit, which included a stop in Chiapas.

But Alamilla of the bishop’s conference seemed to blame the administration for the new abortion law: “I want to believe in the political will of the president, who wants to make fundamental changes in our country, and we hope that he does. I want to believe in his honesty, but morality is not in the line of modernization. The commandment not to kill is absolute.”

Feminist groups, meanwhile, were buoyed by the Chiapas law and vowed to push for the liberalization of abortion laws nationally.