The Supreme Court of Mexico is considering a challenge to a Mexico City law that legalized abortion in April 2007. The law allows abortion in the first trimester. According to the BBC there are about 200,000 illegal abortions annually in Mexico and at least 1,500 women die annually from complications. Outside of Mexico City, abortions are illegal and are nearly impossible to obtain.
The Human Rights Watch describes that “the Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of this law will determine if all women and girls in the capital can continue to access abortion services in bona fide medical facilities with qualified professionals under sanitary conditions, or some will be forced to revert to unsafe and often hazardous practices with unlicensed practitioners in clandestine clinics, pharmacies or marketplaces.”
Of the 11 magistrates on the Court, 8 must rule against the law for it to be ruled unconstitutional. One judge, Salvador Aguirre, has already ruled against the law and wrote that “the right to life recognized by the constitution remains protected from the moment of conception,” Reuters reports.
