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Mexican Bishops Call It Murder

Morning-After Pill Legalized in Mexico

BY BOB MCPHAIL

Pro-life advocates in Mexico have appealed to the Mexican Supreme Court and to President Vicente Fox to reverse a decision by the secretary of health authorizing the widespread use of the so-called "morning-after pill," which they say is the de facto legalization of abortion in Mexico.

On January 23, Secretary of Health Julio Frenk Mora authorized a change in the government's family-planning regulations allowing distribution of the pill in all of the country's government-run clinics and hospitals. The pill has been available at pharmacies and private clinics for about a year. It contains the same hormones as standard contraceptive pills, but at a much higher dosage. If taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse, the medicine blocks the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.

The Mexican Conference of Bishops responded two days after the announcement. "It is a combination of hormones that can act to impede the implantation of an already fertilized ovum in the uterus, causing an abortion. That is a gravely illicit act," said the Commission on the Family of the bishops' conference. "It is an attack on the life of the most innocent of human beings."

"Contraception and abortion are both products of an anti-life mentality, which comes from the culture of death," said Bishop Rodrigo Aguilar, head of the commission.

Bishops across Mexico also individually issued statements condemning the morning-after pill, also known in Mexico as "emergency contraception." In Mexico City, the archbishop, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, speaking to the news media following his Sunday homily on January 25, said that, even though the pill may be classified as a contraceptive, when it produces an abortion, "it is called murder."

"The Church cannot stay silent faced with the genocide of the magnitude which is on its way," said Father Jorge Palencia, head of health services for the archdiocese of Mexico City. Father Palencia warned women who use the pill that they face automatic excommunication.

Cardinal Rivera later supported Father Palencia when questioned about his comments during a January 28 press conference. "It is within the Church's rights to excommunicate anyone who tries to take the life of an innocent human being," he said. "All government authorities should respect human life. This is not optional. This is a fundamental human right that every government official should respect."

Cardinal Rivera stressed that he was not offering a personal opinion: "This is not just the opinion of a bishop, but it is the opinion of the Pope and follows Church law."

Rafael Romo, the bishop of Tijuana, said in the diocesan weekly Presencia, that when the pill is used to produce an abortion, excommunication is automatic.

"This amounts to the legalization of abortion in our country," said Rocio Galvez, head of the pro-life group Pro-Vida de Mexico. "If we don't defend life at all times, then we will become a genocidal nation like the United States and those in Europe."

Galvez's organization has filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Mexico asking that the rule change authorized by the health secretary be declared unconstitutional. Galvez said distribution of the morning-after pill violates the Mexican Constitution, which protects human life from conception until natural death.

The pro-life group, Culture of Life, sent a letter to Mexican president Vicente Fox asking him to reverse the secretary of health's decision, reminding the president that in 2002, speaking before the United Nations, Fox signaled Mexico's support for the idea of protecting life from conception to natural death. Pro-life leaders in Guadalajara, with the support of the archdiocese of Guadalajara, said they would organize protests across Mexico if the government does not reverse its position on the pill. In the archdiocese of Hermosillo, Archbishop José Ulises Macias announced that his priests had been instructed to mention the controversy in their Sunday sermons.

In Tijuana, the daily newspaper Frontera reported that Fronteras Unidas Pro Salud, which is affiliated with Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties, has been distributing the morning-after pill at cost for more than a year at its headquarters just off of Boulevard Agua Caliente near the downtown bullring. "We do not give it away, we sell it much more cheaply than in the pharmacies, but not with a desire to profit, just to recuperate the cost," Marcela de Marino, executive director of Fronteras Unidas Pro Salud, told Frontera.

Frontera also reported that the morning-after pill has been available at pharmacies in Tijuana for about six months, where it is sold under the brand name Vika, which comes packaged as two pills and sells for between 144 and 180 pesos (about $14-$18). The newspaper reported on February 8 that Marino noted a dramatic increase in requests for information about the morning-after pill at Fronteras Unidas Pro Salud in the two weeks following the eruption of the controversy in Mexico.

The secretary of health, Julio Frenk Mora, has defended his decision by arguing that the pill is not abortive in nature, and the approval process took more than five years, based on scientific studies. That opinion, however, is not shared by all medical experts. Dr. César Guitiérrez Samperio and Dr. Genaro Vega Malagón, directors of graduate medical education at the Autonomous University of Querétaro, told the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada that a woman can conceive a child within 20 minutes after having sex on a fertile day and that, after conception, human life has begun. The use of the morning-after pill terminates life at its earliest stages and therefore is abortive in its effects, they told La Jornada.

Pro-life advocates in Mexico have also warned that use of "emergency contraception" can seriously endanger the health of women who use it, including the risk of hemorrhage, ectopic pregnancy and cancers of the cervix and breast.

As of mid-February, President Vicente Fox had made no public comments about the controversy, despite pleas from pro-life groups and the Church that he reverse the health secretary's decision. But Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, national leader of Fox's own National Action Party (PAN), said party officials are closely studying the evidence regarding the pill. "If this is an abortive pill, the PAN will never support it," Bravo Mena said.

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