Women’s health and human rights

The geography of abortion in the USA and Mexico

[Hello to the new student subscribers from a certain college in the UK. I hope this post doesn’t upset you….]

In June 2022, the US Supreme Court ‘struck down’ the federal law that allowed women across the United States to have an abortion within certain limits. The legal case that resulted in this constitutional right for women dated from 1973 and was referred to as ‘Roe versus Wade’. The decision to reverse this was due to the last three appointments to the Supreme Court, all made by President Trump, and all strongly anti-abortion, resulting in the number of ‘conservative’ judges in the Court being in the majority.

It was expected that the number of abortions in the country would fall significantly, especially as several Republican-governed states, e.g. Texas and Oklahoma, subsequently decided to introduce state-wide bans on abortion, some in all eventualities of circumstance [Figure 1]. However, not only has the total number of abortions increased (in the first 6 months of 2023, the number of legal abortions was 511,000 compared to 465,000 in the same period in 2020), but in some states it has increased by considerable margins. For example, in South Carolina (SC) there was a 124% increase between the same time periods. The highest increases were in SC, Virginia, Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, and New Mexico. The key geographical characteristic of these states is that they border where there are abortion bans. The number of abortions also increased in most of the states where the procedure remains legal.

Figure 1

Source: Guttmacher Institute | Data compares totals from January to June in 2023 to a similar six-month period in 2020. | By The New York Times

The data from the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organisation specialising in reproductive health, suggests that more women are travelling across state lines or using online-US sourced medicines to get an abortion. The data cannot be entirely accurate as medicines may be issued by community support organisations, and they may also be obtained from overseas.

The data can be interpreted in several ways. Abortion rights activists may point to the fact that the Supreme Court’s ruling has not had the effect anti-abortion supporters wanted. However, the latter could now argue that further limits to access need to be imposed.

Mexico’s Supreme Court Decriminalizes Abortion

By coincidence, the same week that the above data was publicised, the Supreme Court in Mexico made a different decision. The Court de-criminalised abortion across the country, stating that a previous ruling to ban the procedure was ‘unconstitutional’.

This ruling means that Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country of 130 million people, is now taking a leading role in broadening rights to abortion and can be seen to be expanding women’s rights. This ruling has no effect on local laws, and abortion remains illegal in 20 of the country’s 32 states. However even in those states, women can now legally seek abortion in federal hospitals and clinics. The ruling also prohibits employees at these facilities from being penalised for carrying out abortions.

The court’s decision reflects significant changes in Mexican society and some of its institutions. Much of the country remains culturally conservative, but decades of feminist activism have reshaped how many people think about women’s rights.

The decision also means that we may see the movement of significant numbers of American women from southern US states such as Texas and Louisiana across the southern international border to seek an abortion from the health facilities in their continental neighbour. This would previously be seen as extraordinary.