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Women Convicted of Infanticide Released following Pressure from Mexican Pro-Abort Groups
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent

GUANAJUATO, Mexico, September 2, 2010 (LifeSiteNews) - Seven women convicted of infanticide have been released by the governor of the state of Guanajuato and a state judge following a massive campaign by pro-abortion groups, who have turned their cases into a cause célèbre in the national media.

Governor Juan Manuel Oliva has also announced a legislative initiative to reduce the criminal penalty for infanticide from 25 to 35 years in prison, to three to eight years.

The decision to release the women follows weeks of pressure by pro-abortion organizations, members of the socialist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the national media, which repeatedly claimed the women were really imprisoned for "abortion."

The PRD's Secretary General, Hortensia Aragón Castillo, says she is not satisfied with the legal reforms proposed by Governor Oliva, claiming that it "evades the central issue at the core, which is the criminalization of the right of women to decide about their bodies."

Investigations by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, as well as the state's human rights office commissioner, produced no evidence that the women had been convicted for abortions. However, pro-abortion forces have continued to insist that all seven women imprisoned for "murder in reason of parentage," the legal term in Mexico for infanticide, are innocent of the charge.

Among those to be released is María Araceli Camargo, 26, convicted of infanticide after giving birth to her child and leaving it to die in a rural latrine.  According to the La Jornada newspaper, Camargo claimed that she thought she had diarrhea, but instead gave birth to an infant 53 centimeters in length, an average size for a newborn, while in the latrine.

La Jornada reports that Camargo cut the umbilical cord and left her baby, then went to her family claiming that she felt unwell.  Doctors at the hospital where she was taken immediately recognized that she had given birth, and alerted prosecutors, who found the child at the bottom of the latrine, with fecal matter in its respiratory system. Prosecutors concluded following an autopsy that the baby was born healthy, with a full life expectancy.  Camargo was sentenced to 26 years in prison, but will now be released after serving 8.

Alma Yareli, recently released by state judge Miguel Valdez Reyes, was convicted of infanticide after giving birth to her third trimester baby, which she had conceived in an adulterous affair.  Yareli claimed that she gave birth to the baby prematurely in a bathtub, where it was stillborn, and said she was motivated by fear when she placed it into a bag and left it on a street, according to the Guanajuato newspaper Correo.  Prosecutors concluded that Yareli's child died of hypothermia following the birth.

Fourteen other women are currently being prosecuted for similar crimes, according to local media reports, although it is unclear what will now become of their cases.

I've heard of several cases of female infanticide in India, where the birth of a girl is not welcome especially in poor families for fear of paying dowry later on to the girl's husbands family.  Heard of girl babies drowned in milk and done by the mother.   Tragic to talk about, but true. Also abortion of girl babies is rampant in India where the male population is now weirdly higher than the female population.

India too? This is so sad. I hear about this in regards to China a lot, but I had not heard about India.

This reminds me of the aftermath of the World Wars.. after World War I, and World War II, whole generations of women simply couldn't marry because there were not enough men alive.. the breakdown of the family due to the lack of men and women entering the workforce.. and so too, now because of abortion, throughout the world, fewer women in China.. India. . .

Evil at work, from one extreme to the other..  :(

Isn't it true, Patricia, that abortion or infanticide of baby girls has been the case in India for centuries upon centuries?

I'm not sure that is the case.  Abortion seems to be a new phenomenon, became popular as the rest of the world followed it after it was first allowed in Russia.  Has become rampant in the past maybe few decades.  Its common to see abortion advertisements openly everywhere .  Again I may be wrong about the facts, but its my observation.  My grandparents generation had lots and lots of children and abortion never came to mind.  Probably they didn't even know about it.  Now abortion is so matter of fact.  People talk about it like they are desensitized.  If you go beyond 2 pregnancies people don't think it is terrible to say ' you could get rid of it'.  People close to me talked to me about it after I was pregnant with my third and fourth. They were aghast that I was having more than 2 children.  Since India is a very populous country, there is a big Govt. campaign to have only two children. Now I hear the campaign is about having only one child. Contraception, 'family planning'   is taught everywhere ,  especially in villages where the poor seem to have more children.
Female infanticide again seems to orginate from poverty, but I don't think it happened some decades back.

There is an ingrained craze among all Indians to have a male child, the heir, the one who will carry on the family name. A woman who doesn't bear a son is looked on as an inadequate woman. Thus the pressure on the woman to abort girl babies and in some cases even female infanticide.  A girl child is seen as a liability, someone who will drain the family wealth because she will ultimately leave her parents'  home to go to her husband's home and will take a huge dowry with her.  Now to offset this evil the Government is spending millions on ads to respect the girl child and educate her and treat her like a son.

Immaculate Heart of Mary may Thy triumph come quickly and destroy all evil in the world!! :+:  :crucifix: