A group of protesters celebrate the decriminalization of abortion by the Supreme Court of Justice in Saltillo (Coahuila), this Tuesday. DANIEL BECERRIL / Reuters
The states we inhabit, as well as the institutions and laws that govern us, have been designed — for better and for worse — from a male perspective.
In the history of humanity, it has been men who have debated the way to organize ourselves socially and have determined the way to punish what they have imposed on us as forbidden.
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Mexico decriminalizes abortion after historic court decision
Punishment generally means jail and jail, control over the body.
This control has been the legendary way of exercising power in the patriarchal system, the one that judges us for freely exercising our sexuality, that asks us for proof of non-pregnancy to hire us, that fires us if we are pregnant, that imagines us alone in charge of the taking care of our sons and daughters.
The advancement of women's right to decide is particularly symbolic because it breaks the patriarchal system by losing control over our bodies (they will not be able to force us to be mothers) and eliminates the possibility of punishing us (they will not be able to put us in jail for having an abortion) .
The recent determination of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation is an example of how the criteria can change if the gender approach is incorporated into the debate.
The women who participate today in the political life of the country have the responsibility to use the spaces that others have opened to us so as not to reproduce the same formulas that assign roles, control and stereotype.
That is what you have to throw away.
The national debate that this week focused on the Court's resolution recognizes realities that just a decade ago many and many were refused to see:
The right to a dignified life cannot be understood without physical, economic and decision-making autonomy. Understanding life in this way brings us closer to equality between men and women, to social justice, but above all to individual freedom. A freedom that no one obliges. Whoever refuses to have an abortion cannot be forced, in the same way that whoever refuses to continue with their pregnancy cannot be forced. A freedom that does not impose ideologies and respects the diversity of thinking, feeling, believing and living.
The criminal vulnerability of the poorest women is recognized. The ministers were insistent on it: abortion is a crime that punishes poverty and stigmatizes those who are in prison. The same is true of many crimes. By defending our right to decide, women are also making visible a punitive system that wants to prevent conduct through prison, which mainly punishes defenseless people, with basic education and scarce economic resources. We denounce a penal system that has serious social consequences that reproduce poverty and enhance violence. With this, we began the construction of a new justice system: focusing on prevention and questioning which behaviors should be classified as crimes and which of them deserve the loss of freedom as punishment.
The right to decide on the continuation of a pregnancy belongs to women and pregnant people, which vindicates various gender identities, specifically non-binary people and trans men.
This is an important message of social inclusion, but above all a call to health authorities to dismantle prejudices that prevent or limit the exercise of rights.
13 years ago, when the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation ruled unconstitutional actions on this same issue, it adopted radically different criteria.
In a short time, women who have insisted on the right to decide have achieved a historic change: we are going to throw it away, we are throwing it away.
Our voice is heard.
The strength and articulation that feminist movements have acquired make profound social change urgent.
Women are occupying spaces of power capable of convening an inclusive debate, which not only questions control over our bodies, but also the entire state system.
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