Weight of Catholic Church oppresses women in Mexico

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1992 Printed below is the speech by a representative of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT), the Mexican section of the Fourth International, at the Jan. 19 pro-choice rally in St. Paul, Minn.

Sisters and brothers:

We want to tell you that the children are so beautiful, that the children deserve everything, that our children some day will be our support and perhaps our governments. That's why before having children, we have to think: How many do we want, how many will we be able to clothe, to feed and to educate. That has to be our first question before having children who we didn't want, that we didn't expect and that we won't have anything to offer. Then those children wouldn't have any hope in this world.

Also we want to tell you that in Mexico, just to name one case, over 90 percent of the children bear extreme poverty, that infant mortality is as high as 40 percent, that their parents are 50 percent unemployed and the rest work for $4.50 a day.

Obviously these children are not fed properly. And this case easily can be extended to the rest of the Third World countries. The anti-choice people will ask (we also have many in Mexico, unfortunately) why don't women get birth control? Why do they risk their life aborting?

In Mexico, the lack of sexual education has been the result of first, the weight of the Roman Catholic Church-which is enormous, politically, socially, and culanto Win turally. This church in general supports measures tending to maintain the current ruling system and thus has a very negative position in relation to women. For example, the Church-which opposes legal abortion, and even divorce or contraception-also promotes a policy of a submissive role for women.

Second, the lack of democracy in Mexico: Mexican law allows abortion only in exceptional cases which medically have to be proved. Laws against legal abortion make illegal abortions a big business because an illegal abortion in Mexico costs an average of $500 and, as they have to be clandestine, women risk their lives and their fertility in every abortion.

The church and the Mexican government work together like a hand and glove. The church needs more believers, and the government needs more cheap labor to offer to the "Free Trade Agreement."

You say, "Defend and Extend Abortion Rights!" We agree!

To defend abortion rights in the U.S. will mean extending the struggle for abortion rights on the whole American continent. It will mean extending the struggle for abortion rights in the Third World countries. Women from all over the world have the right to decide what to do with their bodies and with their lives. No woman needs any government regulating what to do or not to do with her uterus. We say, we don't want even one more child unwanted, unwished for.

Long life to the women's organizations!