On December 30, 2020, Argentina paid off one of its historic debts with its poor women. The country decriminalized abortion when the Argentine Senate approved the bill sent by President Alberto Fernández. This allows abortion in the first 14 weeks of gestation and obliges health entities to practice it if necessary, even if one of their doctors declares conscientious objection.
The case of Argentina leaves us with the lesson that to speak of the decriminalization of abortion is to speak of taking care of the lives of women, and in particular of women who have less. With official investigations by the Secretary of Health, the president’s office presented a panorama in which the criminalization of abortion caused the death of 35 Argentine women in 2018, while the number of clandestine abortions in the country was between 350 thousand and 500 thousand. Likewise, the organization of strong mobilizations of women gave a human face to this health crisis and showed the legislators most reluctant to legalization that it does not force women to have an abortion, but rather opens a safe path for them not to dying to do it.
The challenge we face in Mexico in this matter is complex. We have uneven state and federal legislation, as well as a lack of official figures and statistics that give us complete pictures of abortion in our country. In two entities the Legal Interruption of Pregnancy (ILE) has been achieved and up to 12 weeks of pregnancy is allowed freely, safely and free of charge: Mexico City and Oaxaca. However, in general we have punitive laws. In federal legislation there are only three reasons for not punishing abortion: because it is spontaneous, because it is the product of a rape or because the mother is in danger of death. In the states there are various grounds for not punishing it, the only valid one in the whole country being the abortion that is done as a result of rape.
In Mexico we do not have concrete figures on the number of clandestine abortions performed. The 2016 National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (Endireh) tells us that at least in the last five years, just over a million women in Mexico had abortions. However, we cannot know if these were clandestinely. It is also reported that between 2002 and 2006 there were 624 recorded deaths from abortion. It is believed that this figure is lower than the real one, since deaths from complications of a poorly performed abortion, such as sepsis or hemorrhages, are not counted. Another relevant piece of information is that most of the women who died from abortion in Mexico have less education than the average Mexican. On the other hand, having an abortion in Mexico safely costs an average of between 1,950 and 6,950 pesos, counting only the cost of the medical procedure. According to data from Inegi, only four out of 100 women would earn enough to pay for a safe abortion. The criminalization of abortion disproportionately affects the poorest women.
The criminalization of abortion, currently, has been a measure that, more than protecting life, ends up discriminating and hurting women with limited resources in our country. Having disparate legislation leaves this option open only to those women who have enough resources to move to the entities where they can practice ILE. Likewise, in practice, the grounds for legal abortion in Mexico have historically been ignored, or difficult to access for women who do not have legal support to access it. This is well known by Paulina del Carmen Ramírez Jacinto, who 21 years ago, when she was 13, suffered a mob rape in Baja California and was forced by the PAN authorities in the state to have her son. This is well known by the 14 peasant and indigenous women who were imprisoned for homicide by PAN governments in Guanajuato, when they suffered spontaneous abortions.
The position on the decriminalization of abortion is given in the notion that there must be sexual education to decide, contraceptives to avoid abortion and legal, free and safe abortion to avoid dying. It is also a position that calls for work at all levels of health education, in order to create the basis for women to be able to choose safely and fully about their sexuality and motherhood. Mexico is a country that owes a great debt to poor women. But at the same time we have a great opportunity: a federal government and legislative majorities in congresses that know that the poor must go first. It is time to pay off these debts: let’s decriminalize abortion at the national level.
* Specialist in gender equality issues
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