In its first week of sessions of 2026, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) removed from the list of issues of the Plenary Session the project that would analyze this Tuesday the constitutionality of the reform that seeks to reduce the legal period for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVE) in the state of Aguascalientes from 12 to six weeks.
Without giving a new public date for its discussion, organizations such as Catholics for the Right to Decide Mexico considered that this “postponement” by the highest body of justice in the country “maintains legal and medical uncertainty” for the women of Aguascalientes who “cannot decide freely” since the approval of this reform by the Congress of that state on August 28, 2024.
“We were very hopeful that this discussion process would begin today, unfortunately that was not the case (…) The Supreme Court is not responding to a demand that is also already discussed and ready for this right to be guaranteed,” the director of the organization, Aidé García Hernández, told EFE.
The unconstitutionality action was promoted in 2024 by the federal Executive and the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), against parts of the Penal Code of Aguascalientes and a state law related to the protection of life from conception.
García finds this delay in the resolution “delicate” because “in theory” the nine ministers, elected by popular vote on June 1, are of a “progressive nature.”
“The SCJN has to give different signals and has to give a signal of being a progressive Court that defends human rights and that is consistent with all the discourse and narrative that it has built,” he highlighted.
In addition, he recalled that it was this same Court that declared in 2023 the decriminalization of abortion throughout the country, as well as the obligation for all state Congresses to modify their laws to allow IVE until week 12.
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The “pressure” of the Church
Although the reason why the Court removed the unconstitutionality action 172/2024 and its accumulated 173/2024 from its list of issues to be discussed this January 6 is unknown, it is presumed that there is pressure from the Catholic Church or political figures from the conservative National Action Party (PAN) against reversing the decision of the Congress of Aguascalientes to reduce the term for the IVE.
And when the discussion of this project by Minister Irving Espinosa was published, the Mexican archdiocese accused the Court of “disdaining” human life when analyzing “a draft sentence of an action of unconstitutionality” to “eliminate the criminal offense of abortion up to nine months.”
To which Espinosa responded that the project does not intend to allow abortion at any time during pregnancy, but rather to prevent local legislators from reducing the period established by law for abortion, as happened in Aguascalientes.
For García, this entity governed by the PAN for decades is one of the most “conservative” in the country and in which, he maintains, the Catholic Church has “put pressure and had an interference” in issues of “justice and human rights” despite the fact that these actions violate the secularism of the Mexican State.
In that sense, he stressed that with this project the new Court has the opportunity to show itself as “progressive” and resolve the unconstitutionality of the reduction of the weeks approved by the Congress of Aguascalientes for the IVE.
The association’s board defended that there is no “ethical, bioethical, medical or scientific” argument for abortion not to be performed at 12 weeks, even, she said, “we have references” in other countries in the region where abortion is decriminalized up to 24 weeks of gestation, as is the case of Colombia.
So far, 24 of the 32 Mexican states have decriminalized abortion as a voluntary decision before week 12 (with the exception of Aguascalientes, 6, and Sinaloa, 13), in line with the Supreme Court ruling that two years ago determined it was unconstitutional to prohibit the interruption of pregnancy.
With information from EFE
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