By 30 votes to 13, the southwestern state of Guerrero, one of the 32 separate federal, territorial and administrative entities, including the capital, that make up Mexico, decriminalized abortion in mid-May 2022, following Mexico City, Oaxaca, Coahuila, Sinaloa and others.
Women will be allowed elective abortion up to 12 weeks of the baby’s life in the womb. Throughout the country, however, abortion is still possible in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape, in cases of risks to the woman’s life, if the unborn child has serious health issues, and in some cases of extreme poverty.
This belies the claims of those who would smuggle the decriminalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy, passing it off as a protection for women and girls who are often at risk of violence and abuse in this Latin American country. Indeed, on closer inspection, making abortion a choice like any other would even make women exposed to more danger.
If the US federal Supreme Court were to actually (and hopefully) overturn the infamous ruling in Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in the US in 1973, Mexico could become a destination for skin-crawling “abortion tourism.”