Mexico 1, American Taliban 0
How could a country so heavily Catholic be more progressive when it comes to a woman's right to choose?
Life's as kind as you let it be.
Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music
Imagine, if you will, a world in which Mexico is significantly more advanced than these United States. Imagine that Mexico, a solidly Catholic country, has decidedly that women deserve the right to make their own decisions regarding their reproductive functions.
Yes, women should control their own bodies. What a novel concept.
Then imagine, if you’re able, a world in which Mexican women don’t have to tiptoe up to and nearly over the edge of death before they may legally obtain a medically necessary abortion.
Thankfully, that world no longer exists only in our imagination because abortion has been removed from the Mexican penal code. If only our own red-state penal codes could be similarly enlightened, eh?
Then again, that would require Republicans granting women the right to be treated as equals and allowed to make decisions for themselves based on what they believe is best for themselves.
Nah…that’ll never happen.
Mexico’s supreme court has decriminalized abortion across the country, two years after ruling that abortion was not a crime in one northern state.
That earlier ruling had set off a grinding process of decriminalizing abortion state by state. Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to decriminalize the procedure. Judges in states that still criminalize abortion will have to take account of the top court’s ruling.
The supreme court wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that it had decided that “the legal system that criminalized abortion in the Federal Penal Code is unconstitutional, [because] it violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.”
The court’s sweeping decision on Wednesday comes amid a trend in Latin America of loosening restrictions on abortion, even as access has been limited in parts of the United States. Some American women were already seeking the help of Mexican abortion activists to obtain the pills used to end their pregnancies.
If you believe in equality, it’s difficult to find anything in the Mexican Supreme Court’s ruling to quibble with. Indeed, it’s light-years more advanced and reasonable than our own Supreme Court, which seems mired in the archaic “women are property” mindset.
While Mexican states have progressively decriminalized abortion, American red states have regressively REcrimininalized it.
And we condescendingly refer to Mexico as a Third World country….
Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 15 years ago.
GIRE, a reproductive rights organization based in Mexico City, said the court decided that the portion of the federal penal code that criminalized abortion no longer has any effect.
“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker will be able to be punished for abortion,” the group said in a statement.
The ruling also means that the federal public health service and any federal health institution must offer abortion to anyone who requests it, GIRE said. The court ordered that the crime of abortion be removed from the federal penal code.
Meanwhile, in Texas, anyone considered responsible for assisting a woman in obtaining an abortion can be sued and held culpable…all they way down to an Uber driver who unknowingly transports a pregnant woman.
The Mexican Supreme Court ruling seems unlikely to impact abortion access here in the US. If anything, it may spur anti-abortion zealots in Arizona and Texas to redouble the efforts to prevent pregnant women from leaving their states to enter Mexico in search of abortion services.
That may prove difficult given the vast numbers of people crossing the border, but there’s already an effort in the Lone Star State to prevent pregnant Texas women from leaving the state. How they can legally prevent a woman from exercising the constitutionally guaranteed right to interstate travel remains to be seen, as does the enforcement mechanism. Still, Texas anti-abortion zealots may work with the Lone Star State’s legislature to pass legislation to prevent pregnant women from leaving the state.
Good luck trying to enforce that.
This should be a source of embarrassment for Republicans, but they’re not about to see it that way. They’ll view it as just another challenge, a minor setback in their effort to turn America into Gilead and America’s women into handmaidens.
The only way to ensure women’s rights have the same respect and legal standing as our neighbor to the south is to vote Republicans out of office. There’s no way women will be able to count on enjoying equal standing under the law as long as Republicans hold the White House or either house of Congress. Until Democrats control the White House and Congress, this battle will continue.
The only way to make progress and restore women to full civil rights- including the right to make decisions regarding their reproductive functions- is to ensure that Republicans remain in the minority. The federal judiciary has already been packed with reactionary White Conservative Christian heterosexuals hostile to anyone not like themselves. Nonetheless, a legislative branch controlled by Democrats can get a lot done.
They can also begin to dilute the impact The Former Guy made on the federal judiciary. That’s something this country will be dealing with for a couple of generations, but Democrats can at least diminish the impact to whatever degree possible.
Our world shouldn’t be divided into Penis-Americans and Vagina-Americans, and our rights shouldn’t depend on what we’re packing between our legs. All Americans should enjoy the same rights to self-determination- particularly the right to determine when and/or IF they become parents. There’s no more significant decision a person can make, and it shouldn’t be forced on them by the State or by religious zealots who believe they and ONLY they know what’s best for women.
It’s sad that Mexico, a country that Americans have always looked down upon as a “Third World” country, now has a significantly more enlightened legal philosophy regarding abortion. By ordering it to be removed from the Mexican penal code, the Mexican Supreme Court has demonstrated a degree of fairness and morality our own Supreme Court sadly lacks.
While our Supreme Court still holds women to be vessels and the de facto property of men, the Mexican Supreme Court has declared women to be the agents of their own fate and deserving of the right to determine that fate.
Somewhat ironic for a country so thoroughly Catholic, don’tchathink?
If Mexico, whose dominant faith tradition holds that abortion is a sin, can remove abortion from its penal code, why America country do the same?
Because there are too many religious zealots bent on turning this country into a real-life version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with the American Taliban turning our homeland into Gilead.
That may strike some as somewhat alarmist, but I’d caution against false optimism. For instance, look at what’s happening in some red states- like Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida. Look closely, and you’ll see that what’s happening in red-state America is a march toward theocracy. It won’t happen today, and perhaps not even next month or next year…but it WILL happen unless Democrats can put a stop to it.
And that means only one thing- making Roe v. Wade the law of the land.
If that doesn’t happen, America will look like a very different place, perhaps not in my lifetime, but maybe within 25-30 years. The American Taliban is comprised of zealots who are patient, persistent. They will not quit until they achieve their desired goal- no matter what obstacles they face or how long it takes.
It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade; do you think a few years of patiently wearing down the opposition will frustrate the American Taliban?
If you think it will, you haven’t been paying attention.
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