Mexico’s supreme court has moved to decriminalise abortion across the nation.
It comes two years after the court ruled in favour of a challenge to the existing law in the state of Coahuila, reports the BBC. It had ruled that criminal penalties for terminating a pregnancy were unconstitutional.
Mexico’s state and federal government had however been slow to repeal the penal codes. The new ruling legalises abortion in all 32 Mexican states.
The court said the denial of the possibility of a termination violated the human rights of women. Arturo Zaldívar, head of the supreme court, said: “In cases of rape, no girl can be forced to become a mother – neither by the state nor by her parents nor her guardians,
“Here, the violation of her rights is more serious, not only because of her status as a victim, but also because of her age, which makes it necessary to analyse the issue from the perspective of the best interests of minors.”
The court ruling now opens the door for the federal healthcare system to provide abortions. And it is a move that has been welcomed by women’s rights groups across the nation.
Mexico City was the first of the country’s states to decriminalise abortion in 2007. It was then followed by around a dozen other states.
There are a lack of facilities capable of carrying out the procedure however. And women’s rights activist Sara Lovera told the AFP news agency that many women don’t know that they have this right because local governments have not carried out publicity campaigns about it”.
The ruling is likely to anger Mexico’s conservative politicians and the Catholic Church – Mexico is Latin America’s second largest Catholic country. The church’s influence has declined in recently years however, with the country’s government considering itself to be secular.
A number of Latin American nations have loosened abortion restrictions, a move that has been labelled a “green wave”. Elective abortion is currently legal in Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay and Argentina – although the frontrunner in the campaign for Argentina’s presidential election in October, Javier Milei, wants to ban the procedure.
Some countries meanwhile allow abortion in circumstances such as rape or health risks. Outright bares are still in place in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
