The Supreme Court of Mexico decriminalized abortion at the federal level Wednesday, deeming all existing federal criminal penalties for abortion in Mexico’s Federal Penal Code to be unconstitutional.
In its ruling, approved by a three-vote majority, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) argued that the criminal penalties pertaining to abortion struck down by their ruling violated the human rights of women and “people with the capacity to gestate.”
“Criminal provisions that absolutely criminalize the right to decide on the termination of a pregnancy are contrary to the rights to human dignity, reproductive autonomy and free development of the personality, the right to health and the right to equality and non-discrimination,” the ruling reads.
The court instructed the Mexican Congress to repeal the norms contained in the nation’s Federal Penal Code that criminalize abortion. As a result of the ruling, Mexico’s federal public health service and all corresponding federal health institutions in the nation are required to offer abortion to anyone who requests it, and no medical personnel in the Central American nation may be prosecuted for providing abortion services.
La Primera Sala de #LaCorte resolvió que es inconstitucional el sistema jurídico que penaliza el aborto en el Código Penal Federal, ya que viola los derechos humanos de las mujeres y personas con capacidad de gestar.
— Suprema Corte (@SCJN) September 6, 2023
The Mexican top court issued its new ruling as a result of an injunction spearheaded by the Information Group on Reproductive Choice (GIRE), a Mexican feminist and abortion advocacy group. The injunction, filed in early 2022, challenged articles 330 to 334 of Mexico’s Federal Penal Code, which punished voluntary abortion with prison sentences.
SCJN declared in September 2021 that prohibitions against abortion in in each of the corresponding criminal codes of Mexico’s states were unconstitutional. Since then, only 12 out of Mexico’s 32 states have modified their local laws to comply with the ruling. The Mexican state of Aguascalientes was the latest to decriminalize abortion at the end of August following an injunction also filed by GIRE.
The 2021 ruling, which declared unconstitutional the criminalization of abortion in the Penal Code of the State of Coahuila, served as the basis of the injunction filed by GIRE and other Mexican organizations against Mexico’s Federal Penal Code.
“We wouldn’t have this ruling if we didn’t have the Coahuila one two years ago, but I would say that the one today has more reach, definitely in terms of access to abortion,” Isabel Fulda, GIRE’s deputy director, told Reuters.
Fulda told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that the ruling represents “the biggest advance we have achieved in this fight,” adding that decriminalizing abortion from Mexico’s Federal code “sends a message” and “removes the stigma” against the practice.
“What was in the federal penal code was used as a reason to deny access in these institutions, health personnel refused to perform abortions,” Fulda asserted. “Now the door is open to these services in federal institutions that are the ones that serve most of the country, about 70 percent of the population has [access to Mexican social security services].”
Fulda also explained that GIRE has presented an additional 21 injunctions on the states that are yet to modify their local laws to decriminalize abortion in compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling. GIRE hopes Wednesday’s ruling could provoke a domino effect so that local legislatures proceed to legalize abortion on their local state laws.
“It helps the more conservative states if the Supreme Court is the one to force them to do so, because in this way they do not assume the political cost,” she suggested, adding that while her organization considers the recent ruling as a “huge, historic advance,” it’s “still limited.”
“The horizon is for abortion to be completely removed from the codes and to be regulated as a health service,” she said.
