Mexican court ruling upholding women's right to abortion shows global trend better than US Roe v Wad

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Mexican court ruling upholding women's right to abortion shows global trend better than US Roe v Wade decision

by Sydney Calkin, The Conversation

It may surprise you to learn that, over the past 30 years, no fewer than 60 countries have liberalized their abortion laws while only four have rolled back abortion rights. The United States is, of course, one of the latter group that has recently restricted women's access to abortion.

Because the US looms so large in international news coverage of abortion, casual observers often assume that anti-abortion reforms in the US signal a broader global trend or will trigger a domino effect of abortion restrictions. But this view is misguided. It's important to explore why this is.

In order to understand global abortion trends, we should look across America's southern border to Mexico. On September 7, a landmark decision by Mexico's supreme court found that laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional violations of women's rights. The decision lays the foundation for full decriminalization of abortion in Mexico—but will have to be enacted in the legislature before it will be the law of the land.

Nonetheless, Mexico's trajectory is more representative of what is happening across the globe than the US supreme court decision of 2022 that overturned the constitutional abortion right of Roe v Wade.

Progress on abortion rights is visible across the world. Mexico is part of a "green wave" across Latin America that has also achieved reforms in Argentina and Colombia. But progress is not limited to Latin America. In 2018, Irish voters overwhelmingly supported a measure to remove a constitutional abortion ban.

More:
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-mexican-court-women-abortion-global.html