Mexican Supreme Court’s abortion decision expands access to millions, stands in contrast to US

MEXICO CITY (AP):

The decision by Mexico’s Supreme Court to invalidate all federal criminal penalties for abortion opened access for millions of people in the sprawling public health system a year after the court’s US counterpart went into the opposite direction.

Under Mexico’s legal system, however, the ruling did not invalidate all criminal penalties for abortion, which remained on the books Thursday in 20 of Mexico’s 32 states.

Those differences help explain why Wednesday’s ruling, while a dramatic change in this predominantly Catholic nation, was not Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing women’s access to abortion.

Celebration of the ruling spilled out on to social media.

“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The government organisation called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality.

Senator Olga Sánchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court justice, said on X that the ruling represented an advance towards “a more just society in which the rights of all are respected.”

But others in Mexico decried the decision. Irma Barrientos, director of the Civil Association for the Rights of the Conceived, said opponents will continue the fight against expanded abortion access.

“We’re not going to stop,” Barrientos said. “Let’s remember what happened in the United States. After 40 years, the Supreme Court reversed its abortion decision, and we’re not going to stop until Mexico guarantees the right to life from the moment of conception.”

Across Latin America, countries have made moves to lift abortion restrictions in recent years, a trend often referred to as a “green wave” in reference to the green bandanas carried by women protesting for abortion rights in the region.

Some American women already had been seeking help from Mexican abortion rights activists to obtain pills used to end pregnancies.

Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalise abortion 16 years ago.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion could not be treated as a crime in one northern state. That decision set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalising it.

Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th to drop criminal penalties.