Mexico's supreme court on Tuesday declared that it is unconstitutional to penalize abortion, with magistrates voting unanimously to decriminalize the procedure in the country.
Why it matters: Mexico — now the fifth Latin American country to decriminalize abortion — is now the most populous country in the region to allow the practice, the Washington Post reports. The country has the world's second-largest Catholic population, after Brazil.
- Eight of the 11 court judges had already expressed support for decriminalization in arguments leading up to the final decision.
State of play: The court ordered the northern state of Coahuila to remove penalties for abortion from its criminal code, setting a path for nationwide decriminalization.
- The law in Coahuila punished women who received abortions or people who aided them with up to three years of incarceration, according to the Mexican newspaper El Universal.
Of note: Mexico City, Oaxaca, Veracruz and Hidalgo were the only states in the country where abortions were decriminalized.
The big picture: Abortion is still illegal in most of Latin America. Mexico is now the fifth Latin American country to decriminalize it, following Argentina, Cuba, Guayana and Uruguay.
By the numbers: More than 1 million abortions are performed in Mexico each year, per the Guttmacher Institute.
- Most of these abortions occur in clandestine and unsafe conditions "due to profound stigma against the procedure, lack of trained providers, lack of knowledge of where to find a safe abortion and poor knowledge of the laws," Guttmacher writes.
