Mexico’s Inexperienced Wave – by Mike Leavy

For many years, reproductive rights teams in Mexico reminiscent of Las Libres and Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida (Data Group for Chosen Copy, GIRE) have been slowly however steadily chipping away at Mexico’s traditionally conservative anti-abortion legal guidelines and sensibilities. Bolstered by a powerful social connection to the Catholic Church and a traditionally male-dominated political system, Mexico’s stance on abortion has been something however accommodating.

However as I famous in my final article, the occasions they’re a-changing.

Beginning in 2007 in Mexico Metropolis, the decriminalization of abortion has slowly wound its manner by 11 extra Mexican states: Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Coahuila, Colima, Baja California, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, and, simply final month, Aguascalientes.

Throughout Latin America, the reproductive rights motion is understood collectively because the “inexperienced wave”, so referred to as due to the inexperienced bandanas typically worn as a logo of solidarity amongst reproductive rights activists. And on September 6, 2023, the wave in Mexico reached its crescendo when the Mexican Supreme Courtroom fully decriminalized abortion within the nation. In a fiercely-worded pro-choice, pro-human rights press launch, the President of the First Chamber of the Supreme Courtroom, Ana Margarita Ríos Farjat (4 of the 11 justices of Mexico’s Supreme Courtroom are girls, together with the Chief Justice), started the press launch saying the choice thusly:

The felony provisions that completely criminalize the precise to determine on the termination of being pregnant are opposite to the rights to human dignity, reproductive autonomy and free growth of character, the precise to well being and the precise to equality and non-discrimination.

She goes on to put in writing:

The Chamber held that the criminalization of abortion constitutes an act of violence and discrimination primarily based on gender, because it perpetuates the stereotype that girls and pregnant folks can solely freely train their sexuality to procreate and reinforces the gender position imposed by motherhood as a compulsory vacation spot.

The courts ruling stipulates that each one federal public well being and federal well being establishments are required to supply abortions to anybody who requests it.

The US Supreme Courtroom, after all, in its headlong slide into medievalism, just lately revoked the landmark Roe v. Wade determination that legalized abortion on a nationwide stage. And conservative-led states have been falling throughout themselves in an effort to outdo each other with misogynism and sociopathy – with the boy-men of Texas main the cost by actually turning their citizenry into a military of tattle-tales, imposing life jail phrases for individuals who carry out abortions, and even criminalizing the act of touring out of state to hunt an abortion.

This Lord of the Flies-level childishness stands in stark distinction with the grown-up phrases and deeds popping out of Mexico as we speak. And whereas I nonetheless have a powerful sense of affiliation with the US, and the various good and distinctive qualities that nation nonetheless reveals, increasingly I see Mexico because the place that embodies the values of equality, inclusion, freedom, and rationalism that resonate with my very own sense of ethics and morality.