Abortion in Mexico: Why does it seem to advance so quickly?

In the last six years, Mexico has experienced accelerated progress in the decriminalization of abortion, and there are already 19 of the 32 states in which their local congresses have approved it.

What is the reason for this accelerated process? We asked several experts about it.

Political factors

Luis Antonio Hernández is responsible for the Mexican platform Voto Católico, which analyzes the positions of Mexican politicians regarding the values ​​of the Church. In dialogue with ACI Prensa, Hernández pointed out that the progress of the decriminalization of abortion “could not be explained without the role played by the majorities achieved and built by MORENA”, the National Regeneration Movement, founded in 2011 by former president Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.

This role, according to Hernández, was carried out hand in hand with his political allies in the last electoral processes: the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM).

Mexico City—previously the Federal District or DF—was the first entity to decriminalize abortion up to 12 weeks in 2007, when Marcelo Ebrard, who at that time was part of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), was head of government. , the same party to which López Obrador belonged in those years.

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 push for the decriminalization of abortion occurred precisely during López Obrador’s six-year term 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 its power political effort to promote legislation in favor of abortion, getting 12 local congresses to approve regulations favorable to this practice.

Since October 1, with the arrival to power of Claudia Sheinbaum—also from the MORENA party—and thanks to the majority of her party in local congresses, the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, State of Mexico and Chiapas have decriminalized abortion up to 12 weeks.

While during López Obrador’s six-year term abortion was decriminalized in an average of two states per year, under Sheinbaum, in just 59 days six states have adopted this measure.

Another important point that Hernández highlights is the arrival of a woman to the presidency. This is a factor that, she said, “has been the touchstone to promote this agenda that seeks to materialize supposed benefits and false rights for women.”

For Hernández, the ideological training of a good number of the legislative and political cadres of MORENA also plays a crucial role, whom he considers “fully convinced of this ideological current, as demonstrated by the large votes with which crime has recently been imposed. of abortion in various entities of the country.”

For his part, Marcial Padilla, director of the pro-life platform ConParticipación, agreed that abortion is being decriminalized in Mexico “not by popular will, not by social agenda, but by a political will that is telling local congresses to carry out these actions.” processes.”

This, he told ACI Prensa, “is noticeable in the dirty, accelerated way in which these processes are being carried out, sometimes even hiding from society or voting in secret as happened in Jalisco.”

On October 4, the Congress of the state of Jalisco discussed and voted in a night session on the modifications to the local Penal Code. With 20 votes in favor and 16 against plus one abstention, it was decriminalized for up to 12 weeks with voting by ballot, that is, anonymously, so it is not public knowledge who the legislators who approved the initiative were.

“It is a political decision far removed from society,” Padilla said, warning that “as long as we have a government that thinks about pushing women to consider abortion as an option instead of addressing their real needs, we are only going to see a spiral of violence and a spiral of death.”

The breakdown of the family in Mexico

Padilla also pointed out as one of the factors that have facilitated the decriminalization of abortion a growing “accelerated decomposition of family nuclei.”

The “instability of family units means that women increasingly find themselves in a vulnerable situation in which situations may arise where they become afraid, feel alone and come to think about abortion,” she said.

Paulina Mendieta, spokesperson for the Women for Mexico collective and other initiatives to help vulnerable women, warned that “abortion is a million-dollar industry.” He denounced that international organizations dedicated to aiding developing countries offer money to local institutions “and they tell you that there is a condition (to give it to you) and the condition is often the promotion of abortion.”

The pro-life leader also pointed out that “business is done with the corpses of aborted babies and there are certain pharmaceutical companies, certain companies that take advantage of this” such as those who “promote Misoprostol—a drug used to abort—, and other types of abortion pills.”

“Mental laziness” to solve real problems

Mendieta also pointed out the “lack of creativity to solve the real problems of our country. So, because of this mental laziness, they prefer to say: ‘abortion as an option. because we do not have the possibility of really resolving what women are experiencing.’”

In this sense, she called on platforms that defend women and are in favor of abortion to realize that legislators, by approving these measures, “are not solving women’s problems; On the contrary, they get her more into trouble. “They should be the first to label abortion as a false solution.”

He pointed out that a woman who suffers domestic violence “is going to commit an abortion and lose the life of her child, but she is going to return home and continue to be violated.” “Abortion is not solving women’s real problems,” she reiterated.

The “spiral of silence”

One of the reasons why abortion is becoming normalized, according to Mendieta, is the so-called “spiral of silence.” He commented that in popular consultation exercises carried out by the National Front for the Family in the State of Mexico and Mexico City, “the vast majority is against abortion.”

However, he explained that “for the media and for social networks in general, it is better seen to say that you are in favor of abortion. So, the moment someone says ‘this is not right,’ they are crossed out, they are punished.”

In 2023, the French multinational market research and consulting company Ipsos conducted a survey about abortion in Mexico.

The results revealed that 26% of respondents believe that abortion should be legal in most cases, while 23% believe that it should be illegal in most cases. Furthermore, 19% believe that it should be legal in all cases, 16% maintain that it should be illegal in all cases, and another 16% did not express a defined position.

This, she lamented, is because those who defend life are accused of being “ignorant, that we do not know the reality of women, that we are losers, that we are wasting our time, that we are not in favor of women.”

With these accusations, according to the pro-life leader, “they silence you, they punish you socially for saying that you are against abortion.”

A spiritual battle

María Lourdes Varela, director of the 40 Days for Life prayer campaign for Latin America, assured ACI Prensa that “behind every abortion is the devil.”

Varela said that in today’s society the idea has permeated that a baby represents a “great threat to the dream, to the profession, to the future of the girl, and becomes the enemy of its own mother,” and that is “the What the devil wants: to separate any act of love and life from God.”

To do this, the devil seeks to use the person and “get rid of the fruit of love, which are children.” “The devil rejoices in the murder of babies in the womb,” said the pro-life leader.

He explained that, although the outlook seems bleak and sometimes feels like “a lost war” that is not worth it, in their days of prayer outside abortion clinics they find the opposite, because then it is “when we see conversions, when we see lives saved, even if it is one. Then they are like pampering God who tells us: ‘keep going, keep fighting.’”

“In the face of the pain of seeing so many lives lost, so many laws and so many people defending things that are aberrations,” Varela invited us to “continue seeing Christ triumphant. So, I encourage you to persevere in faith. As? Well, through the sacraments.”

Why so much interest in abortion?

In an editorial published this Sunday, December 1, the Primate Archdiocese of Mexico expressed its concern about the “number of states that have addressed the issue in a synchronized manner, and with unprecedented speed.”

The text, published in the weekly From Faith, He denounced that those who promote abortion “maintain the same narratives of supposed benefits for women and supposed rights” and criticized the fact that “arguments against it are not taken into account, even though they are based on science and law.”

Likewise, the editorial warned that the “misnamed ‘right to decide’ is rather a slogan that disguises the intention to force pregnant women in a state of vulnerability to abortion.”

The Archdiocese also recalled that “each of us loses some humanity when one of our brothers is discarded, murdered, whether from his development in the womb or as an adult” and stressed that “no economic benefit, no ideological benefit, compensates “the loss of human beings at the hands of others.”