While restrictions on the right to abortion have been multiplying in the United States since June 2022, Latin America saw Mexico join the list of countries allowing abortion (voluntary termination of pregnancy) in early September. One more country swept away by the "green wave" of legalizations and decriminalizations of abortion initiated by Argentina on the continent, after the mobilization of tens of thousands of women who took to the streets brandishing green bandanas to defend their rights.
There is still a long way to go, however. "In countries (in Latin America) where abortion is legally decriminalized, there are always obstacles to its implementation at the social level," Fanny Gómez-Lugo, director of research and policy programs at the Center for Women's Equality in Washington, said on France 24. As for other countries, abortion remains prohibited, to varying degrees. On the occasion of the International Day of the Right to Abortion, France 24 provides an overview of the situation in Latin America.
Mexico against the tide of its American neighbor
Participants at a protest for International Abortion Rights Day in Guadalajara, Mexico, September 28, 2020. © Ulises Ruiz, AFP
Mexican women can now have an abortion in all federal health institutions. "The legal system that criminalizes abortion in the federal penal code is unconstitutional," Mexico's Supreme Court ruled on September 6, ensuring access to abortion throughout the country by unanimous vote. "This is the first time that the Supreme Court of Mexico has ruled that this is a violation of women's rights, it is a truly historic step," said Fanny Gómez-Lugo.
On 7 September 2021, the same Supreme Court had already struck down several articles of a Coahuila state law providing for a prison sentence for women undergoing abortion and health workers assisting them. While Mexico's highest judicial institution ruled that women who had abortions could no longer be prosecuted, its ruling had only been implemented in a dozen of Mexico's 31 states. The capital, Mexico City, had authorized abortion in 2007, becoming the first jurisdiction in Latin America to do so.
Aware of the country's conservatism on the subject, Fanny Gómez-Lugo remains cautious: "If it is now unconstitutional to criminalize women who have abortions, health institutions can nevertheless continue to put obstacles, such as invoking conscientious objections, for example, to hinder in one way or another the exercise of this right."
However, mentalities seem to be changing in the country. The June 2024 presidential election will see two women – Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City nominated by the ruling party, Morena, and Xóchitl Gálvez, the representative of the conservative camp – both in favor of the decriminalization of abortion.
Read alsoClaudia Sheinbaum, future first president of Mexico?
In Brazil, decriminalization reviewed by the Supreme Court
Brazil could be the next country to flip. On Friday, September 22, the Supreme Court began examining an appeal calling for decriminalization. Although the proceedings have been suspended at the request of one of the judges and are due to resume at an indefinite date, the President of the Court has already announced her vote in favour of decriminalisation.
"The criminalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy [...] undermines women's freedom and dignity," Weber said. "We have been silenced. We have not been able to actively participate in deliberations on a subject that particularly affects us," the magistrate wrote in her 103-page argument.
Today, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape, danger to the life of the mother or serious malformations of the foetus. If a majority of the court's 11 judges – including only two women – decide to follow the president's vote, women who have abortions under 12 weeks of pregnancy can no longer be prosecuted, as can health workers performing abortions.
A possible decriminalization would not mean that it would be possible to have an abortion in public hospitals. The subject of abortion remains particularly sensitive in this very religious country, where the Catholic Church and the evangelical churches – ever more powerful – have many elected members of Parliament. According to a Datafolha poll published by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo in July, 52% of the Brazilian population remains opposed to abortion while 44% is in favor of it.
Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean © Graphic Studio - France Media World
Towards a return to total prohibition in Chile?
In Chile, voluntary termination of pregnancy is illegal, except in cases of risk to the mother's health, rape, or foetal malformation. Rare exceptions, acquired in 2017, which could soon disappear.
On September 20, the council responsible for writing Chile's new constitution – dominated by the far right – approved an article that "protects the life of every unborn person" and could therefore lead to a total ban on abortion in the country. A possible step backwards when, according to data from the Ministry of Health, nearly 4,300 women were able to have an abortion under the law between 2018 and June 2023 – many of them in fact, in cases of abortion for rape, 13-year-old girls.
Chileans will vote in a referendum on 17 December on this draft Fundamental Law, which is still being drafted. A year ago, Chile overwhelmingly rejected, by nearly 62% of the votes, the proposal for a new Constitution to replace the one inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Guaranteeing new social rights, the text then planned to set in stone access to abortion, which would have been a world first.
Threat in Argentina
Thousands of abortion rights activists, including feminist groups in the United States and Chile, demonstrate in support of the decriminalization of abortion in front of Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, February 19, 2020. AP - Natasha Pisarenko
In December 2020, deputies and then senators legalized abortion in Argentina. A historic moment for this country which became at that time one of the few in the region to authorize abortion.
Two years earlier, in 2018, senators rejected a similar text, shattering the hopes of tens of thousands of young women who took to the streets, green headscarves in hand, to defend their rights. This was the beginning of the "green wave", an unprecedented and spontaneous movement of women activists and ordinary citizens, which then spread across the continent.
However, there is a new threat to abortion rights in Argentina. The ultraliberal economist Javier Milei, a candidate in the October presidential election, aims to ban abortion again, as well as sex education in schools. His spectacular breakthrough in the legislative elections in August makes him a serious contender for the presidency, or at least the second round on November 19.
" READ ALSO Javier Milei, the anarcho-capitalist disruptor of the Argentine presidential election
A movement launched by Cuba
Cuba is the first country in Latin America to legalize abortion, up to the eighth week of pregnancy, a measure taken in 1965. It was 30 years before Guyana followed the same path.
In 2012, Uruguay in turn authorized abortion, up to 12 weeks of pregnancy – 14 in cases of rape. Ten years later, in February 2022, Colombia, a country with a Catholic majority and where Protestant Christian churches are influential, goes much further: its Constitutional Court decriminalizes abortion for any reason up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Total ban in some countries
The list of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where abortion is totally banned – even in cases of rape, risk to the life of the mother or malformation of the fetus – is still long. According to information from the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Suriname and Jamaica still reject any relaxation of their legislation, some of them providing for heavy prison sentences. In El Salvador, charges can also be brought for "aggravated homicide", punishable by 50 years' imprisonment.
The legalization of abortion in Argentina in December 2020 did not have the desired effect by feminists in Honduras, quite the contrary: Parliament adopted by an accelerated procedure, less than a month later, in January 2021, a constitutional reform enshrining in stone the total ban on abortion by preventing any possibility of debate on the subject.
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