Mexico’s Yucatán state Congress has approved the decriminalization of abortion up to 12 weeks of gestation, amending the penal code, although the state constitution continues to protect life from the moment of fertilization.

The April 9 legislative action passed with 22 votes in favor and 13 against. According to a statement from the local congress, the deputies approved “the right of women and pregnant persons to decide up to 12 weeks.”

In addition, the penalties for a forced abortion were increased from three to eight years in prison to five and 10 years, and in the case of forced abortion with violence, the penalties increased from six to nine years to nine to 15 years in prison.

Nonetheless, the protection of life remains in force in the Yucatán Constitution, which “recognizes, protects, and guarantees the right to life of every human being, expressly stating that from the moment of fertilization, the person enters under the protection of the law and is deemed to have been born for all corresponding legal purposes.”

Regarding this issue, legislators attempted to amend the constitution, but the proposal was not approved by a qualified majority. With 22 votes in favor and 13 against, the ruling of the Constitutional Affairs Committee failed to be ratified, so it will be referred back to the committee for analysis.

Abortion in Mexico

With its action, Yucatán became the 22nd Mexican state to have pro-abortion legislation.

Since Claudia Sheinbaum assumed the country’s  presidency in October 2024, with majority control by her MORENA party, various local congresses have approved similar measures. During the first seven months of her term, the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, the state of Mexico, Chiapas, Nayarit, Chihuahua, and Campeche have all decriminalized abortion.

Meanwhile, Yucatán Archbishop Gustavo Rodríguez Vega expressed his disagreement with the legislators’ decision.

In statements to the media, he recalled that “God created us to care for our lives and the lives of all others, and within all others is the human being who lives in the mother’s womb from the first moment.”

Furthermore, Archbishop Rodríguez Vega called for us to be “servants of life, of the barely conceived, but of human life as long as the human being lives until his or her final moment of natural death.”

He also asked pregnant women in vulnerable situations “not to despair.” The prelate emphasized that “a decision about her body, about her person,” as is often repeated in these cases, does not involve the “human being who already lives in her womb.”