The Mexican Supreme Court of Justice decision decriminalizing abortion last week is a landmark ruling in a country that has historically outlawed the procedure with harsh penalties for the women who sought it and the healthcare professionals who provided it.
The ruling, which governs federal law in a nation of states, makes abortion legal in federal health institutions and requires the public health service to offer it. The decision does not automatically make abortion legal in all of Mexico (the way that the Roe vs. Wade decision had made abortion legal in all of the United States). But it could speed up a movement by Mexican states to legalize the procedure. Currently, 12 out of 32 states have decriminalized abortion.
The battle for the right to control one’s own body continues, but the Mexican judicial ruling is a significant victory for reproductive rights and the increasingly influential feminist movement in Latin America, which has historically been socially and religiously conservative. Argentina, Colombia and other countries in the region have also legalized or decriminalized abortion in the last few years.
Yet, as Mexico and other Latin American countries demonstrate remarkable progress toward protecting the right to bodily autonomy, the U.S. is going backward. Our Supreme Court undid protections for abortion last year when it overturned Roe vs. Wade. And now a growing number of states are working to erode protections of individual rights as their legislators search for more harrowing and surreal ways to criminalize abortions. So much for the USA being a beacon of freedom.
In Texas, where abortion is illegal unless the pregnant person’s life is in danger, a number of cities are considering “trafficking” laws to make it a crime to help a pregnant person travel on roads in that city to get an abortion in another state (like neighboring New Mexico, where abortion is still allowed). Just as the infamous Texas Senate Bill 8 allowed a private citizen to sue someone suspected of having helped a person get an abortion past about six weeks of pregnancy (before Roe v. Wade was overturned), a private citizen would have the right to sue someone they suspected of helping a person travel on Texas roads and highways out of town for an abortion.
The idea that you could sue someone for legally driving a person to get a procedure that is legal in another state is preposterous and possibly a violation of several constitutional rights, including due process. But as with SB 8, if it’s enforced only through citizen lawsuits, there’s no government official to sue for a constitutional violation. The point is to scare people into not traveling on roads in Texas to get abortions.
Even scarier, in Alabama, where abortion is banned unless a person’s life is in danger, Atty. Gen. Steve Marshall recently said that groups providing financial or any other kind of assistance to Alabama residents seeking an abortion out of state could be prosecuted on conspiracy charges. No one has been charged yet, but his threats have already caused one abortion assistance fund to stop providing financial help to low-income Alabama residents seeking abortions elsewhere pending a lawsuit it filed asking for court protection from anti-conspiracy laws.
These efforts are as cruel as they are mind-boggling. The Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe, returned the decision on abortion rights to the states. That didn’t mean it gave states the right to thwart its residents’ travel plans. Pregnant people leaving the state are not fugitive slaves escaping the plantation.
It’s heartening to witness the progress Mexico has made in restoring rights — and it’s maddening to see the destruction of those rights continue in the U.S.
