Mexican PAN Has Anti-Women's Rights Record

The recently elected right-wing National Action Party (PAN), led by president-elect Vicente Fox, has a disturbing history of hostility towards women's human rights. In the PAN-controlled state Chihuahua, PAN legislators repealed clauses that allowed abortion in circumstances where the women were raped or where their lives were in danger. Elsewhere, in Ciudad Juarez, a city within Chihuahua, more than 100 young women have been raped and killed in the past six years that PAN has been in power - with little legislative or judicial action being taken. Local NGOs charge that Fox's "indifference" towards women and his strong ties with the Catholic Church will threaten the family planning programs and birth control used by over 11 million Mexican women.

Media Resources: Inter Press Service, 10 July 2000

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