Profiling Tepehua

By Moonyeen King

Part Four

 

tepehua4“The Church has always maintained the Historic Teaching that deliberate acts of contraceptives are always gravely sinful, if done with full knowledge and deliberate consent.” Quote from Robert Brom, Bishop of San Diego. Wikipedia Press Release stated. ‘ The 1973 Roe v Wade decision opened the door to legalized abortion. The only coordinated opposition was the U.S Conference of Bishops. After which the involvement of Catholic  Hierarchy in U.S politics increased, with Bishops spending more time and money on the abortion issue.’

Abortion is legal in almost every European country.

North Dakota passed a ‘person-hood’ amendment initiative to give legal rights to embryos, the vote will be taken in 2014. State Senator Margaret Sitte (R) in the Huffington Post “We are intending it to be a direct challenge against Roe v Wade.” Both N. Dakota and Mississippi are fighting to close down the one abortion clinic they each have.

Mexico City legalized abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy. But it is still forbidden in 18 of the 31 Mexican States. As of Jan. 2011, these States believe that Constitutional protection is for all people from the time of conception until natural death. There were 52,484 interruptions (abortions) in the Capital since it decriminalized abortions in 2007. In the State of Guanajuato more than a dozen women have been sentenced up to 30 years in prison for abortion, and approximately 130 sentenced for seeking or providing illegal abortions.

Most states penal codes permit abortions in the case of rape or severe fetal deformities, Yucatan includes economic factors for more than three children in a family under the poverty line. Guanajuato allows none of these.

Religious leaders in Mexico declared life begins at conception, making abortion illegal, which in turn increases the back street abortions all over Mexico, endangering the lives of the women. This also puts women at risk for being prosecuted when they miscarry.

Back street abortions put a woman through so many humiliating and degrading steps before she finally aborts. The filthy conditions, lack of sterilization of instruments, complications, and if they survive or have to have hospitalization, they are at risk for prosecution, and the inability to have children because of unhygienic situations that caused infections.

Lack of information and limited access to contraceptive methods also forces women to rely on illegal abortions as a form of contraceptive.

None of the above would be an issue, if women had the right to choose, with education and family planning. What the author finds astonishing is that this is not forced on women totally by the Church and law makers, who are mostly men, but by the women in power too. Jan. 2013, a Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill that would require victims of rape to carry the fetus full term in order to use the fetus as evidence. Cathrynn Brown (R) states she would charge the victim who terminated her pregnancy as “tampering with evidence.” The Bill remains to be passed.   This is raping the woman twice, and giving her a burden to carry for the rest of her life.

The American Medical Assc. 2010 recorded, in America there were 84,767 rapes and Mexico 14,993. The report is only recorded rapes, many go unreported. Especially here in Mexico, there is too much shame involved.

England also banned abortion and contraceptives for single women, creating victims of back street abortions, botched abortions resulting in deformed children. Young, pregnant desperate women, were violated over and over, having to give their trust to dark strangers in dark alleys.

After the ban was lifted in the fifties, it gave birth to a generation of “Flower Children”, a generation who loved freely, and created the music of the sixties. Bogota. Columbia. A Senator proposed the complete banning of abortions stating, “The true role of government is to develop a social role that offers women and their babies a life of dignity from the beginning—in health care, nutrition and work, so that there is no justification for abortions.” That solution is too simple, it is too obvious, it might work...so therefore will never be implemented.

The Los Angeles Times wrote, ‘Mexico, has limited resources. Overpopulation stretches these resources to the breaking point. When the Pope forbade birth control, he created conditions of over-population and extreme poverty and desperation that helped force mass immigration to the North.’

The illegal Mexican land workers in the North live in appalling conditions too, so that they can send their money home, sometimes living twenty men to a small bungalow, or parked trailer home. Hopefully the immigration laws will change, and those innocent of any crime can live proudly. As it is, the North is creating its own barrio, as long as there is a border, and the workers the north needs so badly are forced to be illegal. Whilst the money from illegal workers is being spent in Mexico, legal migrant workers pay taxes to the United States.

 

 

 

 

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