Thousands demonstrate outside Mexico's Supreme Court to defend life, reject abortion

Mexico City, Mexico, Sep 14, 2021 / 18:19 pm (CNA).

More than 2,500 people demonstrated Monday outside the Mexican Supreme Court building in Mexico City to defend life and oppose abortion. 

Speaking with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, said, “we counted at least 2,500 people, from various states of the Republic” at the Sept. 13 protest.

They came from “Chiapas, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Guanajuato, Puebla, Querétaro, Mexico, Veracruz, and Mexico City. We are extremely happy,” he said.

Last week the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation twice ruled against pro-life articles, once in Coahuila state’s penal code, and in Sinaloa’s constitution. It is now taking up the question of conscientious objection to abortion for medical professionals.

Demonstrators outside the Supreme Court building held up banners, blue pro-life flags, Mexican flags, and images of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, and shouted slogans for life and against abortion.

Doctors and leaders from pro-life organizations spoke at the event.

Cortés noted that the rally outside the Supreme Court was attended by “many young people, and that fills us with hope.”

Attendance was achieved despite the fact that the authorities tried to make it impossible for people to get there. People “were held back in various areas and not allowed to proceed toward our meeting point,” he said.

Physicians were there who told the crowd gathered in downtown Mexico City “that it is their duty, their Hippocratic Oath, which has been said for more than 25 centuries, that doctors are there to save lives, not take them away.”

Elective abortion has been legal up to 12 weeks of pregnancy in Mexico City and the states of Hidalgo, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. In general, abortion is illegal in the rest of the country, but in most cases there are exceptions for rape and the life of the mother. The penalties and scope of the laws vary from state to state. 

On Sept. 7, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation invalidated several articles that protected life from conception in the penal code of the state of Coahuila, opening the door to legal abortion.

The ruling is expected to have wide-ranging effects throughout Mexico.

And the Supreme Court on Sept. 9 ruled against the protection of life from conception in the constitution of the state of Sinaloa. The decision invalidated an article that read that “the State protects the right to life from the moment an individual is conceived.”

The court began Sept. 13 discussing a challenge to the constitutionality of the right to conscientious objection by healthcare professionals, which could force them to participate in abortions against their will.

In the initial decisions made in this session, the SCJN recognized the right to conscientious objection and noted that it does not restrict the right to health.