"The recognition of the right to life from conception does not violate women's rights or jeopardize their safety, on the contrary, it protects them," he said.
Marcial Padilla, director of the pro-life platform ConParticipación, agreed that this "is a sad day in the history of Mexico."
“On this day, the Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico carried out the greatest injustice, the supreme injustice, which is to take away the protection of the law from children before they are born.”
Padilla stressed that "abortion does not solve any of the woman's problems", but rather "leaves her alone and makes her the mother of a dead child."
"From now on, society is going to have to act," he continued. "First of all, to convert the attitude of violence, of aggression, that exists in the country."
"Not only with abortion, but also with kidnapping, homicides and family violence, in a new attitude of solidarity, where we respect each other," he said.
Padilla also said that "we will also have to begin to identify strategies to find what protection we can give our children before they are born."
"We are particularly hurt by the presentation by Minister Arturo Zaldívar, who was of the opinion that the entire abortion chapter should disappear, that is, that it should be possible to abort until the moment of birth," he said.
Padilla said, “Something has to change in our country. We will start the groups that are in favor of the right to life, a path that begins today and that will not stop until we return to having all our children protected before and after being born equally.”
Mario Romo, national director of Red Familia, noted that “the SCJN was not congruent or respectful of its own rulings, especially when they are ethically and constitutionally obliged to respect the rule of law and be guarantors of the constitutionality of the performance of the powers of the Union,” adding that “the ministers voted in favor of opinions and ideological currents of thought.”
Romo specified that "the constitutional guarantee of the right to life from its inception at conception does not violate the rights of any woman, nor does it call into question their legal security, health, or freedom; on the contrary, it protects them."
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In the coming days Mexico’s Supreme Court will also consider the "shielding" of the right to life in the Sinaloa state constitution, and the conscientious objection of health professionals.
Cortés said that if the Supreme Court declares unconstitutional the shielding of life in a state constitution, "it would incur a supreme contradiction, because in what he has said to date is that the states have the sovereign power to legislate on the matter."
“If a constitution, which expresses in the highest degree the sovereignty of a state, is invalidated, what the Supreme Court would be doing is to contradict itself, violating the sovereignty of a state and violating the Federal Pact, which gives origin to Mexico as a republic”, he stated.
In July 2020 a panel of the Supreme Court had overturned a lower court's ruling that could have opened the door to legalized abortion throughout the country. In a 4-1 ruling, the panel of justices rejected a lower court's attempt to require the state of Veracruz to legalize abortion.
And earlier this year, the administration of president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and legislators from his ruling National Regeneration Movement had decided to put on hold a debate on amending the federal constitution to insert abortion rights and gender ideology.
Graduated in Communication Sciences from the Universidad Privada del Norte in Trujillo, Peru. I have been part of the ACI Prensa team for more than 10 years. I have covered Pope Francis' trips to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. I covered the beatification ceremony of today's Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero in San Salvador, El Salvador, in 2015. Special envoy for investigation in Honduras in 2016. Head of the ACI Prensa Office in Mexico since 2018.