To the south in Argentina, lawmakers in late 2020 passed a bill legalizing abortion until the 14th week and after that for circumstances similar to those described in the Colombia ruling. Abortion was already readily available in Mexico City and some states.
Statutes outlawing abortion are still on the books in most of Mexico's 32 states, however, and nongovernmental organizations that have long pushed for decriminalization are pressing state legislatures to reform them. As the country’s highest court, its ruling bars all jurisdictions from charging a woman with a crime for terminating a pregnancy.
Similarly, Mexico's Supreme Court held last year that it was unconstitutional to punish abortion. The decision fell short of advocates' hopes for a complete decriminalization, but Martínez Coral said it still left Colombia with the “most progressive legal framework in Latin America.” Abortion is still allowed after that period under those special circumstances. The February ruling there established a broad right for women to have abortions within the 24-week period, whereas previously they could do so only in specific cases such as if a fetus presented malformations or a pregnancy resulted from rape. “It is an awful precedent for the coming years for the region and the world,” said Colombian Catalina Martínez Coral, Latin America and Caribbean director for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which was among the groups that litigated the abortion case in Colombia’s high court. But for women's activists who for years have led grinding campaigns demanding open access to abortion, often looking to the United States as a model, it's a discouraging sign and a reminder that hard-won gains can be impermanent.