| Mexico’s Supreme Court Decriminalizes Abortion Nationwide Fabiola Sánchez and Megan Janetsky - The Associated Press | |
| go to original September 6, 2023 |
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A woman holds a banner reading in Spanish, “Legal, safe, and free abortion” as abortion rights protesters demonstrate in front of the National Congress on the “Day for Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean,” in Mexico City. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
Mexico’s Supreme Court has decriminalized abortion nationwide, two years after ruling that abortion was not a crime in one northern state.
That earlier ruling had set off a grinding process of decriminalizing abortion state by state. Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to decriminalize the procedure. Judges in states that still criminalize abortion will have to take account of the top court’s ruling.
The court’s sweeping decision Wednesday comes amid a trend in Latin America of loosening restrictions on abortion, even as access has been limited in parts of the United States.
Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 15 years ago.
The Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials as GIRE, said the court decided that the portion of the federal penal code that criminalized abortion no longer has any effect.
“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker will be able to be punished for abortion,” the non-governmental organization said in a statement.
The impact also means that the federal public health service and any federal health institution must offer abortion to anyone who requests it, GIRE said. The court ordered that the crime of abortion be removed from the federal penal code.
Read the rest at Associated Press
Related: Mexican Pro-life Groups Question Validity of High Court’s Abortion Decision (OSV News)
Related: Abortion Access Has Expanded but Remains Difficult in Mexico. How Does It Work Now? (The Independent)
Related: Mexican Bishops Respond to Pro-Abortion Ruling by Supreme Court: Every Life Has Worth (EWTN News)
Related: Mexico Ends Its Federal Ban on Abortion, but a Patchwork of State Restrictions Remains (Associated Press)
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Learn about Mexican Foundation for Family Planning
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