Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion nationwide Wednesday in a sweeping decision following years of activism by women and feminist organizations in the country.
Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 15 years ago. Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to decriminalize the procedure. Judges in states that still criminalize abortion will have to take the top court’s ruling into account.
"The First Chamber of #TheCourt has ruled that the juridical system that penalizes abortion in the Federal Criminal Code is unconstitutional because it violates the human rights of women and people with the capacity for pregnancy," the court tweeted in Spanish on Wednesday afternoon.
"The green tide continues to advance," Supreme Court Justice Arturo Zaldívar tweeted in Spanish on Wednesday, referring to the color associated with the abortion rights movement in Latin America. "All rights for women and people who gestate! Until equality and dignity become customary!"
For more from NBC Latino, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
The court’s sweeping decision comes amid a trend in Latin America of loosening restrictions on abortion and a rollback of abortion rights in the U.S. Twenty-four U.S. states have either restricted or banned abortion since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark case Roe v. Wade last year.
The Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials as GIRE, said the court decided that the portion of the federal penal code that criminalized abortion no longer has any effect.
“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker will be able to be punished for abortion,” the non-governmental organization said in a statement.
Ipas México, a nonprofit organization that supports abortion rights in the country, called the decision "historic" and applauded GIRE for its legal counsel in the case.
The impact also means that the federal public health service and any federal health institution must offer abortion to anyone who requests it, GIRE said. The court ordered that the crime of abortion be removed from the federal penal code.
