Earlier this month, 150 Mexican women from the state of Morelos filed a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), asking the tribunal to analyze Morelo’s constitutional reform which defined personhood as beginning at the moment of conception, and to declare Mexico as responsible for the violation of human’s rights of women.

Over the last 15 months, 16 Mexican states have approved constitutional reforms defining personhood as beginning at the moment of conception, which means that all civil rights have to be protected, including the right to life, and that, consequently, the legal termination of pregnancies will not be allowed.

In late 2007, the Supreme Court upheld a law, which decriminalized abortion up to 12 weeks of gestation in Mexico City. For some women’s organizations and academics, the constitutional reforms are reactions against the law of abortion ruling in Mexico City.

Mexico’s federal structure allows the Congress of each state to modify their constitutions and Penal Codes independently, but reforms cannot contradict the National Constitution nor the National Penal Code.

The reform of the local Constitution, approved on November 11 2008 and published the 11th of December in the official journal “Tierra y Libertad”, states that the “in the state of Morelos it is recognized that all human beings have the right to judicial protection of their lives from the moment of their conception”.

According to the reproductive health advocacy group Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida (Group of Information on Reproduction Choice, GIRE), who is supporting the petition before the IACHR, “this reform infringes on the human rights of women regarding their reproductive autonomy, health, life and freedom”.

“None of the authority of the Mexican State nor of Morelos’ federal state has contested the constitutional reforms using the constitutional control mechanisms, therefore one can affirm that Mexico has neglected its duty of efficiently guaranteeing the human rights of women”.

The women who filed the petition are represented by GIRE, Academia Mexicana de Derechos Humanos and Centro de Análisis e Investigación. They also argued that the constitutional reforms are not observing international treaties signed by Mexico, such the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against women, known as Convention of Belém do Pará.

According to the petition, the constitutional reform infringes the rights to: a decent life in which women can choose their life’s project, a personal integrity, a health protection, a private life (freedom of conscience and thought), an equal protection before law without discrimination, and the right to a life free of violence.

In most of the Mexican states, therapeutic abortion is authorized in cases of rape, when the women’s health is in risk, and when the fetus suffers a severe malformation. Out of these cases, the majority of Mexican states establish in their Penal Codes sanctions to women who choose to end their pregnancies, even with several years of prison.

In the state of Veracruz, for instance, women can be sentenced from six months to four years in jail, in Jalisco, from four months to a year, in Guanajuato, from
six months to three years, and in Baja California from two months to two years.

The petition also denounces the Penal Code reform of Morelos which authorizes a psychological treatment as an alternative sanction to prison or fine.

In a press release, more than twenty Mexican NGOs supporting the petition pointed out that “this option offends women’s dignity as it assumes women as psychologically affected just because they choose to end an unwanted pregnancy and appeal to their health and reproductive rights”.

For the women petitioners, the constitutional reforms contravene the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, which guarantees that “all persons have the right to choose in a free, responsible and informed way the number of children they will have and when they will have them”; and which states that “all persons have the right to health protection”.

The IACHR has already received the petition and it is studying its admission. If the international commission accepts it and determines that such constitutional reforms violate human rights, it could lead to a recommendation for the Mexican State to annul such reforms.

For GIRE and Catholics for Choice, the interruption of pregnancies should be considered a health matter, not as part of the Penal Code.