The latest battle was fought in the central state of Guanajuato, where the Legislature passed a bill this month that would have made the state the only one in Mexico to extend the ban on abortions to cases of rape. The governor, Ram n Mart n Huerta of the National Action Party, known as the PAN, is to announce his decision on Tuesday. Legislators of his own party, which is conservative, narrowly passed the measure earlier this month, inciting furious protests across Mexico by abortion rights advocates, who worried that the measure would move Mexico a step closer to making all abortions illegal. Those same advocates also say the Guanajuato measure is the most alarming example of how the Roman Catholic Church and its right-wing allies in the PAN have been politically energized by the election of the party's Vicente Fox, a native of that state and a Catholic, who will become Mexico's president in December. In just a few months, they will hold the office of the presidency, and now it should be clear that they cannot impose their will on the people.
Abortion laws differ from state to state in Mexico.
However in all 31 states and the Federal District of Mexico City, abortion is generally illegal except in cases of rape. Several other states permit abortion when pregnancy puts the mother's life at risk, when the fetus appears to be seriously malformed and when a woman has been artificially inseminated without her knowledge. In the most liberal exception, women in the southern state of Yucat n with at least three children can have legal abortions if they are financially strapped. While the overwhelming majority of Mexicans call themselves Catholics, intellectuals and the middle class have historically been guardedly secular in their politics. After the revolution at the turn of the last century, the Mexican government passed some of the toughest antichurch laws in the world.