Ninth Mexican state changes constitution in attempt to prevent legalized abortion

Coat of Arms of the State of Quintana Roo                       Image via Wikipedia

The list keeps growing

The legislature of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo has become the ninth in the country to add provisions to the state constitution protecting human life from conception until natural death.

Just days before, the state legislature of Nayarit adopted a similar constitutional amendment. Quintana Roo and Nayarit join the states of Sonora, Baja California, Morelos, Jalisco, Puebla, Colima, and Durango in amending their constitutions to protect human life in the wake of the legalization of abortion in Mexico City.

After Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled last year that Mexico City’s law did not violate the federal constitution, pro-abortion forces have been pushing for nationwide legalization. The state-level actions are seen as attempts to preempt those efforts.

“The State of Quintana Roo recognizes, protects and guarantees the right to life of all human beings by expressly maintaining that from the moment of conception they fall under the protection of the Law and are granted all legal corresponding rights until death, except in the exceptions established by the Law,” reads the amendment, which was adopted with support from lawmakers of every political party.

A similar amendment was approved last week in Nayarit, also across party lines, by a vote of 27-3. “I support life,” said Representative Roberto Contreras Cantabrana of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, which was responsible for legalized abortions in Mexico City. “I will never support disturbing the development of a new life.”

Representative Juan Antonio Echegaray Becerra of the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico, who supported Nayarit’s constitutional amendment, said, “There is no room here to discuss abortion since this is a reform that recognizes and guarantees the right to life... In order for there to be an abortion, conception must have taken place.”

(Editor’s Note: This story was prepared from dispatches provided by Catholic News Agency.)