Bucking US trend, Mexico reaffirms its desire to decriminalize abortion nationally, two years after an initial Supreme Court decision.

The Mexican Supreme Court has ruled that The legal system criminalizing abortion under the federal penal code is unconstitutional because he violates the rights of women and persons of childbearing age.

Just two years ago, on September 7, 2021, the same Supreme Court ruled that criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional. In doing so, the court invalidated an article in the Coahuila Penal Code (one of the 32 states in the federation) which provided for prison sentences for women who choose to have an abortion.

Abortion is already decriminalized in a dozen of Mexico’s 32 states.

It all started in 2007 in the capital, Mexico City, the first jurisdiction in Latin America to legalize abortion. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that women can challenge state laws that continue to criminalize abortion.

All women and persons who can become pregnant have access to abortions in federal health facilities.

Mexico has almost 130 million inhabitants and is 80% a Catholic country. The separation of church and state was already proclaimed with the Reformation of 1857.

Across the border, in the United States, in June 2022, the federal court overturned the Roe v. Wade, who guaranteed American women’s constitutional right to abortion since 1973. It restored the freedom of every state to legislate on the matter.

Since then, the country has been divided between the twenty states that have banned or drastically restricted access to abortion, mainly in the south and center of the country, and those on the coasts that have introduced new guarantees.