Mexico

Starting this week, we will be bringing you a weekly roundup of global sexual and reproductive health and justice news!

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Mexico has thirty-two states if you include Mexico City’s federal district, and until the spring of 2007, when Mexico City legalized it during the first twelve weeks of gestation, abortion was illegal in all of them. It was rarely prosecuted, though, and there were also legal exemptions.

Follow Mary Cuddehe on Twitter, @marycuddehe

In Mexico, a girl had a c-section and premature birth due to life threatening pregnancy complications.

A young woman in Baja California, Mexico has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for miscarrying her baby. Advocates are asking for your help. 

Follow Jodi Jacobson on Twitter, @jljacobson

Human rights defenders often put their own lives on the line to promote and protect all of our rights.  Today we celebrate the women living with HIV and others who advocate for sexual and reproductive rights in the context of HIV and AIDS.

In 2008 the Mexican Supreme Court upheld the law permitting voluntary abortion up to twelve weeks in Mexico City.  A backlash began immediately and 17 Mexican states have now reformed their state constitutions to define life as beginning at conception.  The following testimonial was written by a pro-choice attorney who was in the legislative chamber on the day that the constitutional reform was passed in the conservative state of Jalisco.

The current law in Guanajuato, and the barrage of restrictions being enacted against women throughout Mexico and in the United States and elsewhere poses a test first and foremost for the medical community:  Do health care providers serve their patients?

The "Guanajuato Seven" are freed, family planning becomes a focus in more countries, and  why do Dutch teens have less pregnancy and STIs?

The U.K. pregnancy services ad brings in a bevy of complaints, Mexico approves the morning after pill for rape victims, Crist still waits for a bill, and mandatory ultrasounds are found mostly useless.

Sometimes the struggle for the reproductive justice and the dignity and freedom of women and girls takes on especially compelling and tragic dimensions. This is one of them.