The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) of Mexico eliminated this Wednesday the crime of abortion from the Federal Criminal Code by granting an injunction to the Group of Information on Chosen Reproduction (GIRE).
“The SCJN decriminalizes abortion at the federal level! Thanks to an amparo won by GIRE, all women and people with the capacity to gestate will be able to access abortion services at any federal health institution,” the organization announced through the network. social X (formerly Twitter). Likewise, the SCJN indicated said resolution on the same social network.
The First Chamber of the SCJN declared it unconstitutional to penalize abortion in the Federal Penal Code for violating the human rights of women and people with the capacity to gestate.
The Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in September 2021 the absolute prohibition of abortion in the penal codes of the states, but since then few territorial entities have modified their laws to comply with the criteria of the SCJN, so the crime is still criminalized at the national level. local.
Based on said sentence, which declared the crime of abortion unconstitutional in the Penal Code of Coahuila, the organization filed the amparo.
The organization detailed in a statement that any federal health institution, such as the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) or the Institute of Security and Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE), must provide the service to all pregnant people who request it.
In addition, they indicated, health personnel who perform this type of assistance cannot be criminalized. “Having been approved unanimously, this ruling becomes mandatory for all local and federal judges, who will have to implement what the court has said,” the GIRE statement read. The feminist organization said it trusts the entities to guarantee reproductive autonomy.
Likewise, the federal Congress must modify the Penal Code from the resolution of the SCJN of this day.
The project voted on this Wednesday was 267/2023 by Minister Margarita Ríos-Farjat who analyzed articles 330, 331, 332, 333 and 334 of the Federal Penal Code, which mention sanctions for the crime of abortion at the federal level.
Until now, 10 of the 32 states in the country allowed women the interruption of pregnancy with a limit of 12 weeks of gestation in most of the laws, which they gradually modified.
The first law to decriminalize abortion in Mexico was approved in the Mexican capital, the then Federal District, in 2007.
