The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation of Mexico declared this Tuesday unconstitutional the criminalization of abortion, for women who do it in the first stage of pregnancy, for the first time in its history and recognized the right to decide in a historic ruling.
Unanimously, the ministers of the plenary session of the Supreme Court (SCJN) invalidated article 196 of the criminal 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 does it. abort with consent ".
"There is no place within the jurisprudential doctrine of this Constitutional Court a scenario in which women and people with childbearing capacity cannot consider the dilemma of continuing or interrupting their pregnancy," argued the project of Minister Luis María Aguilar.
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.
With information from Efe.