On September 6, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled against the federal criminal code that prohibited abortions, decriminalizing the procedure across the country.  

“The legal system that penalizes abortion in the Federal Criminal Code is unconstitutional since it violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to carry a fetus,” the Supreme Court announced on social media. 

The decision comes in response to a legal appeal presented by the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, or GIRE, a women’s reproductive rights group. Mexico’s two congressional chambers now must pass a law officially decriminalizing abortion, a process that could take years. 

The announcement was praised by members of the Mexican feminist movement, which has struggled to expand reproductive rights. “It has us particularly satisfied,” Isabel Fulda, the subdirector of GIRE, tells The Progressive. “It is an enormous step.”     

“It is an example of the advances that have been made in recent decades that are not only part of the work of GIRE, but of the entire movement and organizations that work at the local and federal levels, ” she adds.

Reproductive rights activists in Mexico have sought to decriminalize abortion for decades. Previously, abortion was only an option in cases of rape, but the legality of abortion was left up to each of Mexico’s thirty-one states to decide.  

In 2007, Mexico City federal district became the first region to decriminalize the procedure for pregnancies up to twelve weeks. And in the years since, twelve states followed suit, decriminalizing abortions, with the state of Aguascalientes decriminalizing abortions on August 30. 

The Supreme Court’s September 6 ruling follows a previous 2021 decision that interpreted abortion bans as unconstitutional. 

Yet there is still work to be done in Mexico, as Fulda points out. 

“[The decision] does not resolve everything that has to do with the criminalization of abortion in Mexico,” she explains. “Because we are a federal State, like the United States, and so we have local legal codes and the Federal legal code. It is still necessary for changes to be made in twenty local criminal codes.”

As the United States has rolled back reproductive rights following the repeal of Roe v. Wade, abortion and reproductive rights have been expanding across Latin America as part of the Green Wave movement.

“There is still work to be done in Mexico.”—Isabel Fulda

Among the first countries to shift on reproductive rights was Argentina, with the country’s senate legalizing abortion in December 2020. In February 2022, Colombia joined the Green Wave by decriminalizing abortion across the country. Brazil could be next, as a current case before the country’s Supreme Federal Court could decriminalize abortions up to twelve weeks. 

“Brazil has the opportunity to join the Green Wave and recognize the right to access a safe and legal abortion for women, girls, and all people who can become pregnant,” Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International, said in a press statement marking International Safe Abortion Day on September 28. “For decades, the criminalization of abortion has violated our sexual and reproductive rights, and disproportionately discriminated against women who are Black, Indigenous, and living in poverty..”

Mexico’s ruling, however, will almost certainly have a cascading effect.

Despite this progress, many countries in the region continue to maintain the complete criminalization of abortion in any situation. These include Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, among others.

Mexico’s ruling, however, will almost certainly have a cascading effect.  

“The change in Argentina [and] the judicial decision in Colombia had an influence not only on the movement but also on the legislators in Mexico and in the courts,” Fulda says. “There is an example to follow of greater protection of human rights and also a different discourse on abortion, as an aspect of freedom and justice.” 

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