MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials said Tuesday that they would pay a legal settlement to a woman who was prevented from having an abortion after being raped at the age of 13, a decision hailed by women's rights groups as a landmark victory.
In Mexico, only rape victims or women whose lives are at risk are allowed to obtain abortions. But such women have faced innumerable bureaucratic, legal and cultural obstacles when trying to exercise that right in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.
The settlement calls for the victim to be paid about $40,000 in legal and medical fees and reparations. The victim, who is now 19 and raising her son as a single mother, will also receive a government stipend for the child's education through high school.
In addition, Mexican federal and state officials agreed to take steps to ensure that prosecutors and healthcare workers comply with laws that guarantee rape victims' right to abortion.
"This is a triumph for all women," said Marta Lamas, one of Mexico's leading feminists and founder of the nonprofit Reproductive Choice Information Group. "After six years, the government has finally acknowledged that it denied this young woman her rights."
A spokeswoman for the Mexican Foreign Ministry confirmed Tuesday that the government had reached the agreement with the rape victim and would pay the reparations but offered no other comment.
Over the years, the case has provoked a divided response across Mexico.
"Human life in any situation or condition must be respected," Norberto Rivera Carrera, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Mexico City, said in 2000. "That child doesn't deserve to die just because he was the product of a rape."
Mexico, along with many other Latin American countries, has strict abortion laws. Teenagers raped by family members are not allowed to seek abortions -- in most Mexican states, the law defines incest as consensual sex. In addition, 12 is the legal age for consensual sex in most of Mexico.
In the U.S., South Dakota this week enacted a law forbidding all abortions including the few performed in cases of rape and incest. The only exception under the new ban -- which directly challenges the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision -- is in cases in which doctors determine an abortion is necessary to save a mother's life. Roe vs. Wade established abortion as a constitutional right.
