Abortion in Mexico
[8][9] As of November 2024[update], elective abortion is legal in Mexico City and the states of Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Coahuila, Colima, Baja California, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, Aguascalientes, Puebla, Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, the State of Mexico, Chiapas, Nayarit, and Chihuahua.
[12][13][14] However, even in states where abortion is now legal, there continue to be women in pre-trial detention for murder due to spontaneous miscarriage, though the number of such cases has been drastically reduced since 2021.
[18] The same year, Mexico amended its constitution to recognize every Mexican citizen's "right to freely decide, in a responsible and informed manner, on the number and spacing of their children".
[18][21] According to data provided by the Guttmacher Institute, in 1996, Mexico had the lowest percentage of women in Latin America who underwent an abortion procedure, at 2.5%.
[25][26][27] Nevertheless, the effects of these rulings are broader, as it sets a federal binding precedent: Judges cannot sentence people to jail for either having or assisting in induced abortions, even if local legislations have not changed their criminal laws.
[28] The Supreme Court also established that local rules granting protections of "life from conception" were invalid,[29] and that access to legal abortions is a fundamental right of women.
[30] However, as of 2022[update], there continue to be women in pre-trial detention for murder due to spontaneous miscarriage even in states where abortion is legal.
Since 2007, Mexico City, where approximately 7.87% of the national population lives,[38] offers abortion on request to any woman up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy,[39] which, along with Cuba, Uruguay, and Argentina, is one of the most liberal legislations on this matter in Latin America.
[37] In contrast, recent political lobbying on behalf of the dominant Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion organizations has resulted in the amendment of more than half of the state constitutions, which now define a fertilized human egg as a "person", with a "right to legal protection".
[42] Following the decriminalization of abortions in the Distrito Federal, also known as Mexico City, the states of Baja California and San Luis Potosí enacted laws in 2008 bestowing "personhood" rights from the moment of conception.
[43] In September 2011, the Supreme Court rejected two actions to overturn the laws enacted by the states of Baja California and San Luis Potosí for unconstitutionality.
It also declared that clandestine abortions put the lives of women at risk, creates inequality, and produce unnecessary fears over health professionals (doctors and nurses).
[45] If local legislations do not change anything, the Supreme Court could intervene declaring unconstitutionality (like in Coahuila and Sinaloa in September 2021), pushing even more for legalisation.
[46] After this last ruling, public institutions like the Instituto de la Defensoría Pública Federal declared they will help all those women, on any state, under prosecution or in jail, accused of any criminal charge related to induced abortion.
Local attorneys on those states that have not changed their laws could still prosecute people that have undergone abortions, specially those more conservative, but judges will not whatsoever declare them guilty.
[48] The National Supreme Court of Justice ruled on 7 August 2019 that rape victims have the right to receive abortions in public hospitals.
Baja California, Chiapas, Coahuila, Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco, México City, Morelos, Nuevo León, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Zacatecas reported there were none in those states.
[32] According to an unofficial report by the organization Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida (GIRE), between 2009 and 2011, 679 women have charged with the crime of abortion in the interior of the country.
[85][86] In the report, GIRE states that having legislation for each entity makes "access to abortion a matter of social injustice and gender discrimination.
[85][86][87] Research done by Maria Sanchez Fuentes et al. concludes that the health and economic costs of unsafe abortion are very high, in common with other preventable illnesses.
[32][89] A huge proportion of poor and young women are forced to risk their health and lives in the conditions under which many clandestine abortions are practiced.
[8] As of April 2012, roughly 78,544 women had undergone free legal terminations of pregnancy (LTP) without major complications—an average of 15,709 per year since the law passed in 2007.
[32] Since the PRD lost the presidential election, but maintained control of the local legislature and Mayor's Office in Mexico City, they demonstrated the differences between the left- and right-wing parties in the reproductive-rights context by supporting the change in the law.
[32] In 2007, the legal proposal to decriminalize abortion, led by the PRI, was introduced in the Mexico City Legislative Assembly (LAFD).
[88] In this Mexico City abortion reform, "the policy community (including the center-left political parties; the Mexico City government, represented by the Mayor's Office; the local Ministry of Health; and the local Human Rights Ombudsman), along with academics, opinion leaders, and leading scientists, was very much united, and vocal in support of decriminalization".
[32] A public announcement published on 17 April 2007 by the Academy of Bioethics outlined why the decriminalization of up to 12 weeks was not contradictory to scientific evidence, and affirmed that "an embryo at this stage has not developed a cerebral cortex or nerve endings, does not feel pain, and is not a human being or person".
[32] On 31 December 2020, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (MORENA) proposed that the government sponsor a consultation among the nation's women regarding the legalization of abortion.
[33] While public opinion in Mexico City is largely in favor of legal abortion, the negotiation with religious as well as conscientiously objecting doctors and nurses was proven difficult.
[33] Former Secretary of Health, Manuel Mondragon, under the Mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, ensured that abortions were readily available to women who sought them under the legal circumstances.
According to Sanchez Fuentes et al., more than 80 percent of the women who have sought services are Catholic, and formally educated, claiming to help destigmatize abortion, influencing public opinion.
