Church and State in Mexico: A Political Party Wavers on Women’s Rights
Macho, blind, dishonest, kidnapped by aliens. In recent years, detractors have spat plenty of venomous words at Beatriz Paredes, former national director of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
“I abort you, Beatriz,” one editor even wrote in his takedown.
A known feminist, Paredes stood by while her PRI colleagues in various states approved constitutional reforms declaring life as the moment of conception and penalizing the practice of abortion, leading to more investigations and arrests of women. While abortion was illegal before, it was practiced clandestinely without prosecutions in most places. Since 2008, 19 states have passed similar measures—most recently in Baja and San Luis Potosi just last month.
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