Health care personnel facing the new abortion law in Mexico city

Since 2007, Legal Interruption of a Pregnancy (ILE) is possible until the third month of pregnancy, if the woman so wants, in Mexico City’s public hospitals without needing to give any public justification.

This huge change in the abortion law, the only one of this kind in the whole country, has placed the city’s health system, namely, the doctors, nurses and social workers in the public hospitals, in the front line facing the law system. For example, the health law of Mexico City (2009) which regulates “conscientious objection” establishes that a doctor can be a conscientious objector but s/he is obligated to refer the woman to another doctor that will carry out the service (ILE); the law also states “It is an obligation of the governmental public health institutions to guarantee the timely availability of services”.

I think that the changes in the law are showing that two types of principles, that before coexisted but in a parallel way, are now obliged to interact.

Taking these considerations into account, my paper will propose that this reality is creating a new interaction between law and medical discourse, that can be considered within the context of “normative plurality”.

This is based on a research of the health care personnel in some of Mexico City’s hospitals that are practicing ILE’s; a research that has a pragmatic perspective. In the paper, I want to discuss how the health staff are challenged by the legality of this practice and what kind of arguments they are using to accept or refuse to provide the practice; also, how they are justifying their attitudes towards the woman asking for a legal interruption of pregnancy, whether they have a positive, a negative or a neutral position towards them.