MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld Thursday a federal regulation forcing public hospitals to offer the morning-after birth control pill to rape victims.

After six sessions of intense debate, 10 of the 11 magistrates backed regulation NOM-046, court sources told Efe.

The case began in June 2009, when the governor of Jalisco state, conservative Emilio Gonzalez challenged the constitutionality of the regulation.

The governor opposed having hospitals in his state provide the emergency pill, a contraceptive method that the Catholic Church considers to be abortion.

In 1999, 13-year-old Paulina Ramirez, who became pregnant after being raped, decided to have an abortion in accord with legislation in the northern state of Baja California, but doctors talked her out of having the procedure.

The case wound up in the hands of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which in 2005 ordered the Mexican state to pay an indemnity to the young woman to cover her expenses to take care of her son, Isaac, until he turns 18. EFE