Photo: ULISES RUIZ/AFP/Getty Images
The interruption of pregnancy will be legal at the national level in Mexico after this Wednesday the country’s highest court declared its prohibition unconstitutional.
In a ruling issued by the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), the ministers resolved “that it is The legal system that penalizes abortion is unconstitutional in the Federal Penal Code”.
They argued that criminalization “violates the human rights of women and people with the capacity to gestate”.
With this decision, the voluntary termination of pregnancy it cannot be punished if it is practiced in health institutions administered by the federal government.
Until now, only a dozen states in the country, which adjusted their local laws, allowed women to interrupt their pregnancy with a limit, in most laws, of 12 weeks of gestation.
The last controversy presented before the highest court was that of the Group of Information on Chosen Reproduction (GIRE) against the federal Congress and the Executive on the terms of the Federal Penal Code regarding abortion.
The resolution of the First Chamber makes effective the right to non-criminalization of the interruption of pregnancy at the national level as it is an unassailable decision that local courts and judges must follow.
“With this decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, federal health institutions throughout the country will have to provide abortion services to women and people with the capacity to gestate who request it,” GIRE celebrated in a statement.
Organizations opposed to abortion had demanded that the SCJN rule in the opposite direction. Activate and Steps for Life announced that they delivered “8,200 citizen signatures demanding that pregnant women and pregnant women be respected and protected.”
“It is incongruous to leave human beings without any protection, when the Court itself had already protected them,” said Pilar Rebollo, president of Pasos por la Vida.
As of this Wednesday’s resolution, the federal Congress must adjust the regulatory framework. However, it does not directly invalidate state laws that still criminalize abortion.
The decision of the Supreme Court
The five ministers of the First Chamber – four men and one woman – reviewed the case presented by GIRE on articles 330 to 334 of the Federal Penal Code, which penalized with prison terms the practice of voluntary abortions in federal health institutions.
The interruption of pregnancy due to cases of rape, malformations or risk of the mother were protected by law.
The ministers Alfredo Gutiérrez, Arturo Zaldívar and Juan Luis González Alcántara they voted in favor of the total decriminalization in the federal law, while Margarita Rios-Farjat and Jorge Pardo maintained that it should only protect the promoters of the case.
Despite the fact that the Federal Penal Code sanctioned abortion, in fact it was unusual for the Attorney General’s Office to prosecute the crime. Between 2001 and 2019, there were only 14 cases of unofficial persecution, according to a count by the Reforma newspaper.
In September 2021, the SCJN plenary issued a ruling declaring the right to terminate a pregnancy constitutional, a decision based on a controversy over Coahuila state law.
However, such a decision gave the states a margin to maintain the penalty that has been fought by lawsuits on a case-by-case basis like the one presented by GIRE a few weeks ago against the legislation of the state of Aguascalientes.
The First Chamber also ruled on August 30 against the judicial persecution of abortion in that state.
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See original article on BBC