Effort underway to legalize abortion on demand in Mexico’s Hidalgo state 

ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 30, 2021 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

A year and a half after a similar bill was defeated in the Hidalgo state legislature in Mexico, lawmakers belonging to the Morena Party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador are seeking to decriminalize abortion on demand for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

State representatives Rosalba Calva García, Ricardo Baptista González and Roxana Montealegre Salvador of Morena are trying to take advantage of the party’s majority in the Hidalgo Congress to legalize abortion.

Of the 30 representatives that currently make up the unicameral Hidalgo Congress, 17 are from Morena.

Nevertheless, a year and a half ago, Morena party members split their vote on the abortion bill. At that time, the vote was 15 votes against, 10 votes in favor and five abstentions.

Eight of Morena’s legislators voted against legal abortion.

The president of the National Front for the Family (FNF), Rodrigo Iván Cortés, said that precisely to ensure that all Morena party members vote for abortion, and to form alliances, López Obrador’s Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, recently visited Hidalgo.

“Just a few days ago, the Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, came to pressure and threaten the members of the Morena caucus who were not in favor of abortion,” Cortés told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner June 29.

In addition, the FNF president said Sánchez Cordero encouraged the pro-abortion deputies in the Hidalgo Congress to pass the bill quickly.

“She also spent time with Hidalgo state’s governor, Omar Fayad,” of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), “to also pressure him and get support” from the PRI caucus,” Cortés said.

The Morena legislators are trying to get the bill to legalize abortion on demand for up to 12 weeks pregnancy to be passed out of committees on June 29, and brought to a full session of the congress for final passage on June 30.

“This is outrageous,” Cortés charged, and pointed out that right now Mexico is “being savagely attacked by organized crime.”

Despite the serious situation in Mexico, he said, “these barbarians from the Hidalgo Congress want to legalize a crime against the most innocent, the most defenseless. This is terrible.”

“That’s why we’re here raising our voices,” the pro-life leader said, and encouraged “all those who can to use the hashtag #HidalgoEsProvida (Hidalgo is pro-life) and join their voices to those who have no voice.”