According to information published in different international media, which we at the Bioethics Observatory have confirmed as inaccurate, the Supreme Court of Mexico had recently approved the decriminalization of abortion at the federal level after considering the proposal of the Information Group on Chosen Reproduction (GIRE).
The organization announced it through the social network X: «The SCJN decriminalizes abortion at the federal level! Thanks to a protection won by GIRE, all women and people with the capacity to become pregnant will be able to access abortion services at any federal health institution».
According to this information, the Constitutional Court would have considered that the legal system that criminalizes abortion is “unconstitutional”, since it “violates the Human Rights of women and people with the capacity to conceive.”
Remarks to this information
Having consulted legal sources, we are forced to clarify the aforementioned information due to the inaccuracies it contains that we will now detail:
- If the intention is to decriminalize a conduct, the appropriate means is not the writ of protection. In this sense, the information related and published in certain media is not correct: the purpose of the the writ of protection is to protect the fundamental rights that may have been violated by parliamentary, governmental and administrative decisions, or judicial decisions (Organic Law of the Constitutional Court, articles 42, 43 and 44, respectively).
- The writ of protection can be filed by both a natural person and a legal entity, as is the case, since it was filed by GIRE, as well as by the Ombudsman and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
- The Resolution issued by the Constitutional Court will only resolve the the writ of protection filed by the person entitled to do so; it does not resolve either the decriminalization of a Law or the interests of third parties, that is, of people other than the person who has filed the appeal.
- Finally, the Constitutional Court, in its Resolution, if it upholds the appeal, will not do so by attributing privileges to the person who filed it, but by recognizing and reestablishing a fundamental right or public freedom that has been violated.
Therefore, the statements that some media have made to the effect that this ruling would modify the legal status of abortion in Mexico are inaccurate. Abortion up to the 12th week of gestation has been allowed in Mexico City since 2007 and remains illegal in 20 of the country’s 32 states.
Bioethical assessment
Once again, when analyzing the ethical consideration of abortion and its consequences, only the woman’s right to decide is taken into account, as if she were the only person involved in an abortion. The existence of her own son, an immature human being, but with equal dignity to her, is ignored.
As occurs in the rest of the legislation that authorizes abortion, no importance is given to the position of the father, who should be heard as one of the parties involved in relation to this new defenseless human life.
What is now presented as progress in Mexico, as it seems to show the achievement of freedom for women, is nothing more than a new setback that normalizes the extermination of defenseless and dependent immature human beings. This is the opposite of what progress in a civilization should be: protecting those most in need more.
We do not celebrate, therefore, from personalist bioethics, these alleged advances that in reality hide profound setbacks and we will continue to show the evidence that proves the human reality of the embryo, whose dignity and rights must be respected.
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