Mexico Human Rights Agency Slams States for Marriage Bans on People With HIV, Serious Diseases

Mexican soldiers raise the national flag in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main plaza, Sunday, March 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s governmental human rights commission on Wednesday called on ten of the country’s 32 states to get rid of old laws that ban marriage between people with “chronic, incurable, hereditary or contagious diseases,” saying that could discriminate against the HIV-positive or people living with AIDS.

The National Human Rights Commission’s recommendation was directed to the leaders of the states’ legislatures. The states must either comply with the call or explain why they refuse.

Such laws were once a common response to poorly understood diseases or perceived as a way to prevent birth defects. They have slowly disappeared, but ten outlying states still have them.

Those states are Chiapas, Guerrero, Quintana Roo and Oaxaca in the south, Querétaro, Puebla and Guanajuato in the central region, and Durango, Sinaloa and Nuevo León in the north.

The commission said Mexico’s Supreme Court has already ruled that any risk of infection that might result from marrying someone with an infectious disease is solely to be judged by the person getting married.