• Last year, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion.
• The decision led to more permissive legislation in several of the country’s states. In contrast, the U.S.
• Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to outlaw or severely restrict abortion care.

State legislators have turned to their southern neighbor for guidance and direction on how to navigate the newly restrictive legal landscape in the United States regarding abortion.

Last year, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion, loosening decades of restrictive laws in the predominantly Catholic country and leading to more permissive legislation in several of its states.

The decision stands in stark contrast to the United States Supreme Court’s decision last month to overturn Roe v. Wade, which overturned 50 years of precedent and allowed individual states to outlaw or severely restrict abortion care.

Now, because the abortion accessibility landscape that Mexican lawmakers faced until recently resembles the terrain in parts of the United States, State legislators in the United States have begun to learn how Mexican policymakers and women’s health advocates were able to provide safe abortion care to women — and how they were able to reclaim certain abortion rights.

“Being able to go to Mexico, and visit activists who have been doing the work on the ground for many, many years, who changed the culture, changed what is possible, who really forced lawmakers and health care providers to think differently about abortion as health care, and then to see the ways in which the policies and the legal landscape and the medical landscape have shifted as a result was incredibly powerful,” said Julie Gonzales, a Democratic Colorado state senator who travelled to Mexico with five other state legislators earlier this summer.

The trip was organised by State Innovation Exchange, a progressive legislative policy group, to give state legislators a better understanding of how grassroots and progressive policy efforts could help bring about meaningful change in abortion rights.

According to organizers, Mexico’s trajectory provided an interesting case study.

When the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in September 2021 to decriminalize abortion, experts predicted that the decision would eventually pave the way for abortion to be legalized throughout the heavily Catholic country.

As of May, nine of Mexico’s 32 states had passed laws or passed measures legalizing the right to abortion care during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, though abortion is still illegal in many of the country’s other states.

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