Colombia Decriminalizes Abortion

Colombia Decriminalizes Abortion
The decision by the Constitutional Court comes in the wake of similar moves in Mexico and Argentina.

The ruling opens the door for abortion to become widely accessible in the country.

Abortion rights supporters celebrating in front of Colombia’s Constitutional Court after the ruling in favor of decriminalizing abortion in Bogotá on Monday.Credit...Nathalia Angarita for The New York Times


https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/21/world/colombia-court-abortion

Having an abortion is no longer a crime under Colombian law, the country’s top court on constitutional matters ruled on Monday, in a decision that paves the way for the procedure to become widely available across this historically conservative, Catholic country.

The ruling by Colombia’s Constitutional Court follows years of organizing by women across Latin America for greater protections and more rights, including access to abortion, and significant shifts in the legal landscape of some of the region’s most populous countries. Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in a similar decision in September and Argentina’s Congress legalized the procedure in late 2020.

The ruling means that three of the four most populous countries in Latin America have now opened the door to more widespread access to abortion.

It also comes as the United States has been moving in the opposite direction, with abortion restrictions multiplying across the country, and the U.S. Supreme Court considering a case that could overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion