The case of 13-year-old Paulina Ramirez, raped by a heroin addict in her Mexicali home, garnered international attention when it was reported in 1999.
Ramirez and her mother sought a legal abortion, but numerous Baja California state officials and public healthcare workers pressured her to carry her pregnancy to term.
Antiabortion activists visited Ramirez at the hospital, showing her pictures of aborted fetuses in a bid to persuade her to change her mind. The Baja California state attorney general drove her to see a priest who told her abortion was a sin.
Ramirez's son was born in 2000. Ramirez has spoken publicly about the case, and women's rights groups in the United States and Mexico have taken it up. They sued in local courts with little success.
In 2002 they filed a petition seeking redress with the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an international tribunal whose authority is recognized by Mexico.
In the agreement, the Mexican government recognized that Baja state officials violated federal law.
"This is the most important legal victory for women in Mexico in a decade," said Luisa Cabal of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, one of the groups that represented Ramirez before the tribunal.
Cuba is the only Latin American country allowing abortion on demand. Other nations in the region allow abortion only in cases of rape or when the woman's life is at risk.
But "even in those places in Latin America ... women are denied access because of the religious beliefs of health providers," Cabal said.
The settlement is scheduled to be signed by Baja state representatives and Mexico's federal government today, which is International Women's Day. In announcing the settlement at a Mexico City news conference, New York-based Human Rights Watch also reported the results of a study on the difficulties Mexican rape victims faced in seeking legal abortions. Titled "The Second Assault," the report detailed the stories of numerous rape victims who were cajoled, intimidated and threatened into carrying their pregnancies to term.
The law that allows victims of rape to obtain legal abortions "is broadly supported by the Mexican people, but it is a right that is rarely respected in practice," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
"Many pregnant rape victims are essentially assaulted twice," Roth said, "first by their rapist and second by public officials who ignore them, insult them and deny them their right to a legal abortion."
