A fist raised high in resistance with a fabric wrapped around the wrist, captioned "aborto" (abortion), in front of a Mexican flag. Photo: Expansion Politica/File photo.
México’s Supreme Court of Justice recently decriminalized abortion throughout the nation, in a historic ruling that marks another step in the fight for reproductive rights.
According to the AP news agency, the Court’s justices unanimously approved this Wednesday, September 6, an injunction that nullifies the section of the Federal Criminal Code that criminalized abortion in the country.
As a fundamental part of this ruling, federal public health institutions, such as the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and the Institute of Security and Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE), are obliged to offer the service free of charge.
The Court’s resolution also states that in no case may medical personnel be criminalized for performing the procedure.
It should be recalled that México’s Federal Criminal Code included disqualifications of two to five years for physicians who practiced any abortive procedure.
This decision is one more step towards the freedom to terminate a pregnancy, after the historical precedent of 2021 that ruled abortion was not a federal crime, reports El País.
The First Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled that the legal system that criminalizes abortion in the Federal Criminal Code was “unconstitutional, since it violates the human rights of women and persons with gestational capacity.”
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
This has been and continues to be one of the main battles of women’s rights organizations in México and numerous Latin American countries for several decades. Venezuela unfortunately remains one of those countries with very conservative and restrictive measures criminalizing abortion.
With this decision, the Federal Penal Code of México also needs to be amended to eliminate the crime of abortion, which is established in Article 329 as “the death of the product of conception at any moment of pregnancy,” and which declares a sentence of one to three years imprisonment for those who “cause a woman to have an abortion,” even if they were to do so with her consent and wish, reports El País.
(Últimas Noticias) by Ariadna Eljuri
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
