Rebecca Grant on the Battle for Reproductive Freedom in Latin America and Throughout the World

By Rebecca Grant
June 24, 2025

Abortion had been a federal crime in Mexico since 1931, but every state within the country permitted abortion for pregnancies that resulted from rape, and others allowed it if the life of the mother was in danger or in the event of severe fetal anomalies. So when the legislature in Guanajuato, a state in central Mexico, proposed in 2000 to revoke the lone exception to the state’s abortion ban, Verónica “Vero” Cruz thought something along the lines of “Oh hell no.” Eliminating the provision would have resulted in a total ban in a place plagued by sexual violence, and Cruz, a respected activist and the leader of Las Libres, a recently formed feminist collective in Guanajuato, was not about to let the meager sliver of abortion rights that existed in her state shrink any further, or women’s well-being to be used as a political pawn. Something had to be done.

Continued:  https://lithub.com/inside-mexican-feminists-fight-for-safe-and-legal-abortion/