Abortion Is No Longer a Crime in Mexico. But Most Women Still Can’t Get One.

MEXICO CITY – When the Mexican Supreme Court issued a historic ruling on Tuesday declaring an abortion not a crime, activists across the country celebrated. On Wednesday, they went back to work taking on the long and arduous process of making sure the legal shift applied across Mexico.

Her top priority is helping the women who need it most: those who are being prosecuted, often after being reported to the authorities for trying to obtain an abortion under dangerous conditions.

“A woman who chooses an abortion is already vulnerable, and then we have to face the dire situation in which we believe we will be punished,” said Yetlanezi Pech, who was hospitalized bleeding after an abortion attempt an emergency doctor refused to help and handed her over to the authorities.

“I was so scared, I felt so insecure, I felt really, really bad,” she said. “And I also felt alone.”

Ms. Pech is one of the thousands of women who have been investigated for illegal abortion in recent years. In the first seven months of this year alone, 432 investigations into illegal abortion were launched across Mexico, according to the Mexican government.

Tuesday’s ruling set a legal precedent for the nation – and is in stark contrast to the trend in the United States, where Texas and other states have recently moved to restrict abortions. The court’s decision also raised the prospect of Mexico eventually becoming a destination for American women looking to terminate their pregnancies, lawyers said, although doing so would require removing the many barriers that make abortion difficult in much of the country.

Tuesday’s ruling applies only to the border state of Coahuila, and its statewide implementation will require either legal challenges in each of the 28 states in Mexico that still criminalize the process or a change in law by state lawmakers. The judges did not specify how far a woman can legally abort from pregnancy, which means these conditions are likely to be set at the state level.

A leading abortion rights group in Mexico, GIRE, said it would press for abortion to be legal in Coahuila for at least 12 weeks after conception – a deadline set in the law that made abortion legal in Mexico City and before has been validated by the Supreme Court.

If it were, Coahuila would have more permissive abortion rules than neighboring Texas, where state lawmakers recently passed a law banning most abortions after about six weeks. In time, Texas women could potentially cross the border to have an abortion – but right now there isn’t enough infrastructure to meet the need, activists said.

“More needs to be done before women and people who could become pregnant in Texas can access the service in Coahuila,” said Melissa Ayala García, litigation coordinator at GIRE. “We still have a way to go to make sure the service is delivered.”

Texas law forbids abortions as soon as cardiac activity can be detected in the embryo. At this stage of development, there is no heart, just electrical activity in developing cells that begins about six weeks before many women even realize they are pregnant.

Activists in Mexico have already begun working on a strategy to force states to abide by the court’s ruling, though their struggle for legal and safe abortion across the country could be long. Only Mexico City and three other states allowed abortions on request prior to Tuesday’s decision.

“We are already well organized and ready to seize the opportunity presented by the court’s new decision,” said Arely Torres Miranda, reproductive rights attorney for San Luis Potosí state. “We have to get them to change the law.”

This plan is likely to meet with resistance. Mexico’s conservative PAN party, one of the largest opposition parties, is fighting against legalizing the process.

“The party clearly has the right to life from conception, both in its platform and in its principles,” said Damián Zepeda Vidales, a PAN senator and former party leader.

Mr Zepeda, who said he would speak out personally against legalization efforts in the Senate, added that the party was waiting for the Supreme Court to publish the ruling behind Tuesday’s ruling to determine its national strategy.

Since Mexico City legalized abortion in 2007, a network of activists based there has been working to provide a safe way for women who wish to have an abortion, either by taking them to the capital or by providing them with misoprostol, a drug that which is commonly used for abortion.

But many women are too scared to turn to these groups and opt for clandestine abortions.

“We have seen terrible cases where they do it with hangers where they hit their stomach,” said Ms. Torres Miranda. “You are risking your life.”

When these methods go wrong or result in excessive bleeding, women often go to hospitals. However, federal law requires medical service providers to notify authorities if a patient shows signs of being involved in criminal activity – such as an abortion.

“Yesterday’s ruling will also allow us, in the event of a change in the law, to remove the health sector’s obligation to report if it detects an abortion,” said Ms. Torres Miranda.

In general, the most marginalized women – who are poor and live in rural areas – are those who are prosecuted for an abortion, Ms. Torres Miranda said.

It is not clear how many women are currently being prosecuted or jailed for an abortion, activists said, as comprehensive data is difficult to collect at the country level.

Ms. Pech said that when she came to the emergency room at home two years ago after her failed abortion, she was treated as if she did not deserve medical treatment. The attending doctor accused Ms. Pech of being a drug addict and persuaded her colleagues not to offer any help.

“Nobody wanted to come near me because I just had an abortion,” said Ms. Pech. When she finally had surgery, she said her then-partner was told that both would soon be jailed for the crime of terminating pregnancies.

“The same doctor who took me called the authorities to arrest me,” she said. She was able to quickly hire a lawyer and avoid arrest. But before the attorney agreed to take the case to court, he came to her home to issue an ultimatum.

“He told me to ask God’s forgiveness for what I had done,” she said. “And then he would help me.”

Ms. Pech, who has two sons, said that with the help of the lawyer, she managed to avoid criminal penalties.

Tuesday’s landmark decision is the first of several abortion law cases to be heard by the Supreme Court this month. On Thursday, judges will examine whether a provision in a law in Sinaloa state protecting life from conception is similarly unconstitutional. Given the court’s recent rulings in favor of access to abortion, analysts say it is very likely that judges will decide to beat the law.

“That would also be historical,” said Ms. Ayala, the GIRE process coordinator. “We are in a very, very, very important September.”

However, the topic remains controversial among the population: Mexico is a largely socially conservative country in which the Catholic Church has significant influence. According to surveys, a majority of Mexicans are still against legal abortions.

But attitudes have changed over time. In 2005, according to a survey by research company Parametria, only 12 percent of the country were in favor of legalizing abortion in all cases. A 2019 poll by El Financiero newspaper found that nearly a third of Mexicans were in favor of full legalization.

This week’s decision signaled, at least for Ms. Pech, that a change could finally come and that other women could be spared the suffering she was going through.

“That opens up the possibility that these things will stop happening,” she said. “There’s no need for this to happen.”