Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled today that states must provide emergency contraception or legal abortions to rape victims upon request. This brings states who have passed anti-abortion legislation in the past 18 months back into line with federal law, which allows for the legal termination of pregnancies resulting from rape.

Mexico City legalized 1st term abortions back in April of 2007, becoming the only place in Latin America outside of Cuba where women can choose to end an unwanted pregnancy. The Supreme Court later ruled that states and the federal district could decide whether or not to permit abortions within their jurisdictions. This sparked a flurry of state-level constitutional amendments to protect life from the moment of conception.

The language of the reformed amendments did not take into account the exceptions made in federal law for pregnancies resulting from rape or those that present life-threatening risks to the woman. That was the essence of the challenge brought before the court by the state of Jalisco, known as a bastion of conservative Catholicism. Seventeen other states must now revisit their reformed constitution to allow rape victims the choice of terminating their pregnancies.

Related background story at http://www.fsrn.org/audio/mexico-city-marks-three-years-legalized-abortion-women-outside-still-face-risks/6627

A key figure in the Triqui autonomy movement was assassinated Thursday afternoon along with his wife in the town of Yosoyuxi near San Juan Copala. Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez was one of the main organizers behind the “autonomous municipality” of San Juan Copala.

In Mexico, a “municipality” has the same political status as a county seat. Yosoyuxi is located within the territory of the 3 year-old self-declared autonomous municipality.

Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez and his wife, Cleriberta Castro, ran a small store in the front portion of their home. According to a press release from the autonomous municipal authorities, eyewitnesses saw men in a 3-ton truck pull up to the store front run by the couple under the guise of selling merchandise. Ramírez and Castro were found dead later by a neighbour.

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The ambush that killed a prominent Mexican human rights defender and a Finnish observer near San Juan Copala, Oaxaca may be the first time in Mexican history that paramilitaries have opened fire on an international humanitarian caravan, but it’s not an isolated act of violence. The fiercely independent Triqui nation has been steeped in years of bitter internal fighting which was itself preceded by decades of military occupation.

Francisco López Bárcenas, an academic who has written extensively about Triqui history, traces the current crisis back to the 1940s when the government withdrew recognition of San Juan Copala’s status as a county seat municipality – Mexico’s only political district with a distinctly Triqui identity.
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