Views from the High Court: The Right to Abortion in Mexico

October 28, 2019

Just days after protests erupted across Mexico demanding all states decriminalize abortion, GHELI Senior Scholar in Residence, Alicia Ely Yamin, moderated a conversation at Harvard Law School about the globally contentious debate. The event--“Abortion Battles in Mexico and Beyond: The Role of Law and the Courts”—was made a reality by the Global Health and Rights Project (GHRP), a collaboration between GHELI and the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School that explores the potential of human rights and global health justice as interconnected roads to strengthen the right to health. 

In Mexico, states enforce abortion laws. Currently, only Mexico City and, as of September 25, Oaxaca have decriminalized abortion. The remaining Mexican states have some of the strictest abortion laws in the world—marking the act as a punishable offense except in the case of rape. Even still, these services can be difficult to obtain in practice and women have been jailed for murder due to miscarriage. If Mexico City’s decriminalization of abortion has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Justice since 2007, why haven’t other states followed suit? What does the political tension between federal and state policies look like? 

Answering these questions were two Justices of the Mexican Supreme Court—Justice González Alcántara and Justice Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena—along with the retired Vice President of the European Court of Human Rights, Judge András Sajó. They discussed the implications and context for recent decisions upholding the right of access to abortion in cases of sexual abuse. The Justices discussed at length the ways in which public health and law have intertwined to shape health in Mexico today. The Justices reflected upon their job and concluded that although the power of enforcing abortion laws lies with the state, since the health sector is centralized and federalized, their role is to interpret law and frame the issue of abortion in the context of the constitution. They shared the role of international human rights law in their decision making process, stating that it is essential for guiding their decisions, along with the experiences of other countries. 

Although access to safe and legal abortion is yet to be realized for the entire country of Mexico and all of Latin America, the recent legalization of abortion in the city of Oaxaca is the fruit of hard labor by assiduous activists that have been championing women’s rights. Justice Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena confidently remarked that it would only be a matter of time before the issue would come to the Supreme Court of Mexico. The future of the country is in the hands of civilians who will persist onwards, and the policymakers, judges, and justices, who must interpret laws through a human rights lens to create waves of change for the nation’s health.

To learn more about the intersection between sexual and reproductive health rights and law, explore The World’s Abortion Laws, an interactive map from the Center for Reproductive Rights showcasing the legal status of abortion in every country.