58. Accordingly, the Inter-American Commission finds that the alleged victims in this case were prevented from exhausting other appropriate and available remedies. Consequently, it finds in this case that the exception to the exhaustion of domestic remedies rule provided in Article 46.2.a does apply. 2. Deadline for presentation of the petition 59. Article 46.1.b of the Convention establishes that, in order for the petition to be declared admissible, it must have been presented within a period of six months from the date on which the interested party was notified of the final decision that exhausted domestic jurisdiction. This rule does not apply when the Commission finds that any of the exceptions to the exhaustion of domestic remedies rule set forth in Article 46.2 of the Convention applies. In such cases, the Commission must determine whether the petition was presented in a reasonable period of time under Article 32 of its Rules of Procedure. According to that article, in its analysis the Commission “shall consider the date on which the alleged violation of rights occurred and the circumstances of each case.” 60. According to the petitioner, the existence of a jurisprudential provision in force under domestic law that is final and binding for all judicial, administrative, and legislative bodies in Costa Rica and for every person in itself creates a legal situation that affects the rights protected by the American Convention on Human Rights. In this specific case, he maintains that a continuing violation of the Convention has occurred. Consequently, he alleges that paragraph (b) of Article 46, which requires that the complaint be lodged within a period of six months, does not apply. 61. The State, for its part, maintains that the petitions were presented after the deadline, that is, beyond the period of six months, having been presented to the IACHR in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, i.e., several years after the final ruling on the matter was known 13 on March 15, 2000. According to the State, it is not reasonable to conclude that an alleged violation continues years after the interested parties have been notified of a final decision, since in that line of thinking the alleged continuing violation would have been accepted tacitly by the alleged victims since the reasonable period of time for reporting the supposed rights violation to international bodies would have expired much earlier. The rule concerning a reasonable period of time for lodging petitions with the inter-American human rights system must be analyzed in each case, taking into account the legal action taken by the relatives of the alleged victims, the State’s actions, and the situation and context in which the violation is alleged to have taken place14. 62. In this regard the Commission observes that the complaints lodged refer to a health condition, infertility, which is diagnosed medically, a situation of which the alleged victims had no reason to be aware at the time of the judgment by the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica. The alleged victims were affected by the judgment once they needed in vitro fertilization to procreate biologically. 63. Considering the nature of the complaints presented, which refer to the effects of a judgment issued by the highest judicial authority and still in effect, together with the health situation of which they were unaware at the time the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica issued its ruling on March 15, 2000, and which affected them when they learned that in vitro fertilization was their only option for biological procreation, and that, according to the analysis under the exhaustion of domestic remedies, they realized that no effective remedies were available to them, the IACHR finds that the six-month rule does not constitute an impediment to the admissibility of this case under the circumstances here established 15. 64. In this particular situation, the IACHR finds, for purposes of the admissibility requirements, that the petitions were presented within a reasonable period of time. Communication from the State, dated May 14, 2007. IACHR, Report No. 7/07, Petition 208-05 Admissibility, Florencio Chitay Nech et al. (Guatemala), February 27, 2007. 15 See IACHR, Report No. 28/98, Case 11.625, María Eugenia Morales de Sierra (Guatemala), March 6, 1998, paragraph 29. 13 14 9