Mexico’s Supreme Court has decriminalised abortion nationwide. The judgement comes two years after the court ruled in favour of a challenge to the existing law in the northern state of Coahuila.
It had ruled that criminal penalties for terminating pregnancies are unconstitutional. The new ruling is likely to anger Mexico’s more conservative politicians and the Catholic Church, in Latin America’s second largest Catholic nation. Elective abortion is legal in Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay and Argentina, Argentina’s frontrunner in the campaign for its presidential election in October, Javier Milei; however, wants to ban the procedure. Some countries also allow abortions in circumstances such as rape or health risks, while outright bans apply in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The reforms in Mexico and other Latin American countries contrast with the situation in the United States, where a Supreme Court ruling last year overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the right to abortion nationwide.
Source: BBC