Paulina of Baja California state in Mexico became pregnant after being raped by a burglar when she was 13 years old. Despite obtaining legal authorization from the justice department, Paulina was denied an abortion at the public hospital. Instead, she found herself visited by anti-abortion activists and subjected to religious condemnation. By the time the hospital approved the abortion, it was too late, and Paulina was forced to carry her pregnancy to term.

While abortion is legal in every state of Mexico if the pregnancy is caused by rape, few women are able to exercise this right. Legal and medical professionals who are opposed to abortion often put up roadblocks for women seeking the procedure, and the bureaucratic requirements can be difficult to complete within the first trimester.

Ipas Mexico works to increase access to and improve the quality of abortion care and reproductive health services in Mexico, and to advance women’s sexual and reproductive rights.

Ipas Mexico trains medical and legal professionals and works to ensure that hospitals have high-quality reproductive health equipment. Ipas has also played an important role in strengthening public policies and creating norms to improve care and increase women’s access to abortion.

During the past six years, Ipas Mexico has placed a special focus on ensuring that rape victims receive comprehensive care. The Federal Ministry of Health recently adopted the “Integrated Model of Care for Victims of Sexual Violence,” which was designed in close collaboration with Ipas Mexico. The model requires public- health personnel to offer legal abortion and specifies that while individual health-care workers can refuse to provide legal abortion services, health facilities must have staff available and willing to perform the procedure. 

Adolescents are an important focus for Ipas Mexico because of their demographic relevance and their vulnerability to unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and HIV/AIDS due to high-risk behaviors. In Mexico, there are 20 million youth (aged 20 to 29) and almost 11 million adolescents (aged 10 to 19). According to the 2000 National Health Survey, only one out of five females used contraception during her first sexual encounter. The survey also showed that six percent of women aged 20 and younger and 11 percent of women women aged 20 to 24 have experienced an abortion. Young women are at very high risk for unsafe abortion. 

Ipas Mexico is working on a three-pronged strategy to improve access to and quality of services for adolescents and youth. One part of the strategy is to use health reasons, specifically mental health, as the legal justification for abortions for adolescents. This indication has fewer judicial and bureaucratic requirements than abortion for rape.

Ipas Mexico’s second strategy is conducting advocacy to implement guidelines that guarantee adolescents’ rights to information and services, including the rights to informed consent, privacy and confidentiality. Additionally, Ipas Mexico is one of three nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) invited by the Ministry of Health to participate in the development of a new national norm for health care provided to adolescents and youth. The third related strategy is to launch campaigns to train medical and other professionals to identify and treat sexual violence and forced pregnancies in adolescent users of health services.

Ipas Mexico actively engages young people to improve their sexual and reproductive health and rights. It collaborates with youth-oriented NGOs throughout Mexico and Latin America as well as with health-care institutions, providers and decisionmakers.  The November 2004 Encuentro Nacional de Jóvenes y el Sector Salud sobre Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos (Forum for Youth and the Health Sector on Sexual and Reproductive Rights) brought together youth and health-care professionals to improve sexual and reproductive health services for young people and incorporate human rights into health services. In May 2006, Ipas Mexico worked with youth activists to convene an encuentro or forum in Chiapas state.

In the aftermath of the July 2006 elections, one of Ipas’s major challenges is to institutionalize safe abortion services so that they will be available to women regardless of changes in the political environment.  Creating strong norms is an effective means to institutionalizing services.  Helping to train a new generation of activists and medical professionals who treat women with respect and are well-trained in sexual and reproductive rights issues is a long-term strategy.