2023-09-07 11:19:58
The Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico made a historic decision on September 6 to prevent women from being jailed for terminating their pregnancies. The judges approved an appeal presented by an association to annul the article of the Federal Penal Code that criminalized abortion, considering it unconstitutional.
The NGOs that defend reproductive rights in Mexico had been waiting for this ruling for years. The judges of the Supreme Court of Justice unanimously validated the protection of the GIRE, Information Group on Chosen Reproduction, and decriminalized abortion at the federal level.
decriminalization of abortion
“What the Court ruled is that, for these federal institutions, that is, health institutions that are governed by the Federal Penal Code and that are throughout the length and breadth of the country, abortion should no longer be considered a crime. . So, for the first time in our country we have a decision regarding the decriminalization of abortion, which has a national scope without necessarily reaching all the services in the country,” explains Rebeca Ramos, the director of the GIRE civil association, to RFI.
“Regarding the specific effects of this decision, it details that” for example, a woman who is a beneficiary of Social Security and who lives in the state of Campeche and has an unwanted eight-week pregnancy and wants to interrupt it, can go to her Social Security hospital, request this service and it will be provided to you”, continues Ramos.
“Before today, that same woman in Campeche could not go to either the state hospital or the federal hospital, the Social Security hospital. She would have had to travel, for example, to the state of Veracruz or to Mexico City to be able to terminate this unwanted pregnancy”, she adds.
“Longer Range” Strategy
There are still stages for this process to be complete: “It is definitely a historic ruling, although in Mexico we still need 20 states of the country to modify their penal codes. That is to say, we still cannot say that it is law in absolutely all of Mexico, because there are these two areas, the federal and the local. But we managed to stop abortion from being considered a crime at the federal level. Yes, it is a historic resolution in that sense, ”says Ramos.
“This action was not only made against the Federal Penal Code, but we have filed appeals together with organizations from each of the states where abortion continues to be a crime. So, it is a more far-reaching national strategy and we hope that sooner or later, it will be resolved in the same sense that it was resolved today, and that abortion will now cease to be a crime, in all of Mexico’s penal codes.” concludes the director of the GIRE, specifying that this process will still take months and months.
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