Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion nationwide Wednesday, making it one of many Latin American countries that has eased restrictions on the procedure in recent years.
Wednesday’s decision comes after a narrower 2021 ruling that decriminalized abortion only in the state of Coahuila, which sits along the US-Mexico border. Though some states moved to liberalize their laws around abortion since that ruling, federal law defining abortion as “unconstitutional,” as well as laws penalizing medical providers who perform the procedure, still stood until Wednesday. Now, abortion will become available in all federal Mexican health institutions in every state where women could have previously faced criminal penalties for undergoing the procedure.
“It is a huge and historic victory for Mexico and for the entire region,” said Anu Kumar, president and CEO of Ipas, a global reproductive justice organization. “Abortion is not a crime. Abortion is part of essential health care. And that is what the Supreme Court in Mexico now clearly recognizes.”
Mexico — much like the rest of conservative, largely Catholic Latin America — has been slow to lift restrictions on abortion. But under pressure from abortion activists’ so-called “Green Wave” movement, the legal landscape has changed dramatically in the last three years. Since Argentine lawmakers voted to legalize the procedure in 2020, Colombia’s highest court also decriminalized abortion, Ecuadorian lawmakers made abortion legal in cases of rape, and Chilean lawmakers began seeking to guarantee women’s reproductive rights through the country’s new constitution. (The rise of the far right in elections held earlier this year, however, has threatened to reverse that progress in Chile.)
Wednesday’s ruling is another victory for the Green Wave.
“Latin America has a very powerful not just feminist movement, but social justice movement, and they are increasingly working at a regional…
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