The
Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation
(
SCJN
) of
Mexico
has declared this Tuesday unconstitutional the criminalization of women who abort in the first stage of pregnancy and has recognized the right to decide in a historic ruling.
Unanimously, the ministers of the plenary session of the SCJN invalidated article 196 of the penal code of the northern state of
Coahuila,
which imposed from one to three years in prison "to the woman who voluntarily performs her abortion or to the person who causes her to have an abortion with her consent. ".
"There is no place within the jurisprudential doctrine of this
Constitutional Court
a scenario in which women and people with the ability to carry a child cannot consider the dilemma of continuing or interrupting their pregnancy," the minister
Luis María Aguilar's
project has argued
.
Abortion, whose criminalization is a local competence, is only decriminalized in four of the 32 states of the country:
Mexico City
,
Oaxaca
,
Hidalgo
and
Veracruz
.
But now, derived from a challenge that the defunct
Attorney General's Office
(
PGR
) made against the
Penal Code of Coahuila
in 2017, the SCJN declared unconstitutional the criminalization of women who have an abortion and that of health personnel who assist them with consent.
"The grip of criminal law to punish those who voluntarily interrupt their pregnancy is not here a power available to the legislator, since human rights are at stake," Minister
Margarita Ríos-Farjat said
Tuesday
.
The ruling has been "historic" because it is the first time that the Supreme Court of Mexico "puts the right to decide at the center of the discussion," according to Minister Aguilar.
"To think that penalizing the right of women to decide on their bodies is a solution that goes against the principle of minimal criminal intervention," Minister
Yasmín Esquivel
agreed
in the first session.
Implications
The Supreme Court's decision only invalidates the penal code of the state in question, Coahuila, but sets a mandatory precedent for all the country's courts, which must rule in favor of women from other states.
With this, women and organizations that defend reproductive rights will be able to take advantage of the precedent to combat the criminalization of abortion in other state criminal codes through the courts.
In addition, the project states as one of its implications "the guarantee that women or pregnant persons who so decide can interrupt their pregnancy in public health institutions in an accessible, free, confidential, safe, expeditious and non-discriminatory manner."
"The State must not only abstain absolutely from criminalizing abortion, where the right of women or pregnant women to decide on their own body is restricted, but it must also guarantee minimum conditions for this to be possible," added the Minister
Norma Piña.
Disagreements
Despite the support for the project and the concept of the "right to decide", the ministers have shown their disagreement on whether the ruling should define the time of pregnancy.
Some ministers have argued that the "right to decide" is not "unlimited", while the president of the Supreme Court,
Arturo Zaldívar,
regretted that the bill "fell short", since it should invalidate all the articles that criminalize abortion under any precept.
"For a decade I have held in this Supreme Court that there is a fundamental right to interrupt pregnancy," said Zaldívar.
The Supreme Court had already resolved a constitutional controversy in 2008, when it declared the decriminalization of abortion constitutional in the country's capital, the then
Federal District.
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