This April 24 was 18 years old of the decriminalization of free abortion at the request in Mexico City until 12 weeks of gestation, a legal change that laid the foundations for other federative entities to replicate the measure. What has brought this legal turn for Mexico since then? Experts from different sectors respond.
Mexico City – previously Federal District or DF – was the first entity to decriminalize abortion until 12 weeks in 2007, when he was head of government Marcelo Ebrard, who at that time was part of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the same political group to which Andrés Manuel López Obrador belonged in those years.
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In October 2011, López Obrador left the PRD and formalized the creation of Morena. When he won the 2018 elections, Ebrard joined his government as Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
The greatest impulse to the decriminalization of abortion occurred precisely during the six -year period of López Obrador in power, between December 2018 and October 2024. Morena, which in the 2018 elections obtained a large majority in the congresses of several states, took advantage of his political power to promote legislation in favor of abortion, making 12 local congresses approved regulations favorable to that practice.
Since October 1, with the arrival of Claudia Sheinbaum – also of the Morena Party – and thanks to most of his party in the local congresses, laws were approved favorable to abortion in the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, State of Mexico, Chiapas, Nayarit, Chihuahua, Campeche and Yucatán.
Abortion in women
In statements for ACI Prensa at the beginning of April, Pilar Rebollo, director of the Steps for Life Foundation – which organizes this May 3 the march for life in Mexico City – said that for women the conditions since then have not changed: “We are still abandoned by our couples, pressured to abort and farewells of our work.”
Rebollo said that, 18 years later, abortion has not given real benefits to women. On the contrary, “60% of women who abort recover, and 70% of them do so under pressure from a third. Tell me, where is the freedom to decide on their own body?” He questioned.
Although in most states abortion is decriminalized in the first weeks of pregnancy, he said that it is not something that discourages the cause in the country. On the contrary, he assured that he encourages “taking to the streets, we will continue to raise the voice for all those women, for all those babies in gestation.”
He stressed that they will continue working, because “every life is a triumph, every life that we save, every life that we help from these women is a triumph for us. Until abortion is unthinkable.”
“I’m always going to have the desire to know what my baby’s eyes were”
Faced with the legal advance of abortion, one of the most visible platforms to deal with the culture of death has been 40 days for life, an international campaign of prayer and testimony against abortion centers.
Surveyed in the United States two decades ago, the organization provides currently performs campaigns in more than 1,000 cities in 63 countries, including Mexico, and assures having saved more than 25,000 lives from abortion claws. It has also had a key role in the closing of 162 abortion centers.
Lourdes Varela, 40 -day director for life for Latin America, explained to ACI Prensa that being outside the abortion centers “we see everything”, and that has allowed them to speak with hundreds of women. According to their experience, they have been able to verify that many of them live a deep pain, especially for a phenomenon that identifies as “not allowed duel.”
This is due, he explained that “society pushes you to be an enemy of your child, get rid of him, and then he does not tend his hand, because nor does it let you cry”, because they believe that “it was the best decision.”
Varela reports that, for example, a woman told her that she went every night to the place where she aborted because her parents had convinced her that “it was not the time, that she was in her university career, ‘in the flower of life’, which was not the time, that later other children would come”, but the woman always lived “repentant to have killed that baby.”
He also shared the case of a volunteer who attends the vigil after having aborted, and who lives “the pain that she was also forced to abort her five -month twin babies.” Another testimony, already in the process of healing, confessed: “I will always have the desire to know what my baby’s eyes were.”
That pain also manifests itself as a spiritual departure, he explained: “A departure from God in which you do not allow yourself to approach yourself, because you want to continue convincing you that it was not bad, that it was not a mistake and that in the end it was the best decision you could have made at that time.”
Despite this, he concludes that “obviously the forgiveness and mercy of God exist and call us all. But there has to be repentance of heart and desire for conversion.”
According to Varela, more than 40% of 40 -day volunteers for life are women who have experienced the drama of an abortion.
A “judicial imposition”
Marcial Padilla, director of the Platform Conartication, said that in 2007, when decriminalization was approved in Mexico City, many thought that the states would quickly add “excited because they finally left them aborted.” However, the social reaction was not expected.
The groups that promote abortion, he said, “dreamed or imagined that others were like them. Then they thought that when they achieved the decriminalization of abortion in Mexico City, in cascade, the women of the other federative entities were going to be able to do the same (e) were going to launch into the streets to demand that same possibility of committing abortion.”
However, he recalled, “exactly the opposite happened and felt extremely surprised because they realized that people thought differently from them. That did not make them reconsider because, I insist, it is a matter of will and previous decisions.”
Thus, it was nothing more than 10 years later, that decriminalization was promoted through resolutions of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), the highest judicial body of Mexico, with the Faculties of Constitutional Court. “They imposed the decriminalization of abortion. They introduced it in a broader way,” said Padilla.
Since 2021, through various failures, the SCJN declared unconstitutional The protection of life from conception and the total penalty of abortion in different state laws. This served as an argument for many state legislators to boost the decriminalization of abortion in their federative entities.
“They specifically use the word ‘advance’. It is not the word that describes what has happened, because none of the steps in relation to abortion have been given from social manifestations. They have been given by judicial imposition and by legislative blackmail.”
Finally, he warned about what he considers an ongoing cultural change towards the “normalization of abortion.” He described this process as a “gloomy scenario, to the extent that more women consider that abortion is a freedom, instead of a darkness that we are leaving them for their life.”
Diego López Colín
I am a graduate of journalism at the Carlos Septién García school with experience of religious institutional communication. Since 2016 I write for digital media and, since 2018, I report the most important news about the Catholic event in Mexico for the Ewtn news channel. ACI Press correspondent in Mexico since 2023.