Mexico City passes law to give free morning-after pills to 12-year-olds

The law currently awaits the signature of left-wing Chief of Government Miguel Mancera. Protoplasma Kid / WikimediaCommons

By Sofia Vazquez-Mellado

LifeSiteNews, MEXICO CITY -- Mexico City’s Congress approved a law June 4 allowing people “from 12 to 29 years [of age]” to have free access to the abortifacient “morning after” pill and to receive orientation on building “the gender identity that they wish for” without their parents’ consent. The law currently awaits the signature of left-wing Chief of Government Miguel Mancera.

“The government will significantly push for the free availability of contraceptives for the youth in all of Mexico City’s health centers,” reads the legislation, which still has not been published, though LifeSiteNews obtained a copy. “This includes emergency contraception.”

“The government will support and orient, within its faculties and possibilities, for young people to have access to medical and legal services that allow them to build the gender identity that they wish for,” it continues.

Such “emergency contraception” can also cause abortions when taken in the first few days following sexual intercourse.

Leticia Gonzalez, president of the pro-family association Voz Publica A.C., told LifeSiteNews that several pro-life and pro-family organizations are asking Mancera, the chief of government, to veto the law.

According to Gonzalez, the law “will strip the parents of their rights and obligations as those responsible for educating and protecting their children.”

It will also “make children easy targets of prostitution as a consequence of becoming promiscuous with or without pay or as slaves,” she added.

Mexico already ranks first place in the world in child pornography broadcasting, according to statistics published last year by the Mexican Senate.

The law also mentions the need to build a “strategic plan” to “divulge information” to the youth regarding the “legal interruption of abortion,” which in Mexico City is legal up to 12 weeks.

Gonzalez told LifeSiteNews this law will “increase the clientele at the Marie Stopes clinics and make their business grow, as the public health center in Mexico City does not have the [needed] infrastructure” to distribute the morning after pill.

Marie Stopes is Britain’s leading abortionist organization, and has recently opened abortion clinics in Mexico City and in Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state.

An explanatory document attached to the law says the purpose of the legislation is to “take charge of the enormous population of teenagers that prematurely become parents.”

However, in an interview with the Mexican newspaper Zocalo, Dr. Jorge Sepulveda, a gynecologist and member of the Medical Association of Monclova, said the number of young women with unwanted pregnancies has increased with the use of emergency contraception.

“Many patients think it’s a contraceptive method,” he explained. “There are patients that take it two or three times a month and have severe issues.”

The “morning after” pill is already sold throughout Mexico without prescription with prices that range from the equivalent of 3.80 USD to 12 USD.

According to the healthcare information firm IMS Health, the emergency contraception pill was placed as the best-selling oral contraceptive in Mexico during the first half of 2012, with 6.8 million sales.