Reforma's Denise Dresser: Mexico's Women Without Abortion Rights Denise Dresser - Reforma
go to original September 25, 2013

The shadows of pro-choice activists are cast on the pavement during a protest in Mexico City. (Reuters/Bernardo Montoya)

In Mexico, being a woman means not being able to make decisions about your own body if you don't live in Mexico City. In Mexico, being a woman means that other people - government workers, priests, husbands, men - can still decide your fate. In Mexico, being a woman means that you have to fight for the right to be so fully. We are still far from safe and legal abortion.

Far from reproductive health and the information necessary to obtain it. Far from non-discrimination and autonomy. All these rights are enshrined in the Constitution but ignored in practice. All these rights are contained in human rights treaties that Mexico endorses but ignores. And so the women of our country are still sitting in the back of the bus, in the second class cabin, in the rearguard of a history that they could write but have not been allowed to.

This has produced a country of inequality, lack of opportunity, of all that might have been but was not. Women with resources can travel to Mexico City or abroad to have an abortion. But poor women, uneducated women, indigenous women, no.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

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