Opinion for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Morelos Remains Stagnant
Since June of the previous year, the Commission on Constitutional Points and Legislation of the Congress of Morelos approved by majority the repeal of the fractions of the state Penal Code that criminalize the voluntary interruption of pregnancy. However, this transcendental opinion is currently being held in the Secretariat of Parliamentary Affairs, waiting for the coordinators of the parliamentary groups to decide its inclusion in the Plenary agenda for discussion and final vote.
Deputy Melissa Montes de Oca, president of said legislative commission, confirmed this situation. His statement occurs in the context of a mandate issued by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) addressed to the governor of Morelos, Margarita González Saravia, and the Health Services of the entity. The country’s highest court ordered the implementation of immediate actions to guarantee access to legal abortion in the state, even in the absence of a formal reform to the current criminal framework.
The Supreme Court Ruling and its Immediate Implications
This historic judicial decision was issued by the First Chamber of the SCJN when resolving the amparo in review 570/2024, a legal appeal promoted by 48 women and people with the capacity to conceive. The ruling not only protects the complainants, but also establishes a wide-ranging precedent. The Court explicitly instructed the state Executive Branch to exercise its powers to promote a legislative reform that decriminalizes abortion. This can be materialized by presenting a new initiative or, more directly, by promoting the approval of the opinion that has already been discussed and approved at the commission level within the local Congress.
Fundamentally, the high court established that, as long as the Legislative Branch of Morelos does not modify the law, the state authorities have the constitutional obligation to guarantee access to the pregnancy termination service. This guarantee must be carried out without criminalizing the people who request the procedure or the health personnel who carry it out, protecting them from any type of persecution or criminal sanction.
The Long Legislative Road and the Obstacles Faced
The president of the Constitutional Points Commission detailed the tortuous process that this initiative has followed. In December 2024, a district judge issued an order linking the process to the Congress of Morelos, ordering it to legislate to repeal the articles that criminalize women for having an abortion. The judge set a peremptory deadline that expired on December 15 of that same year. However, Congress failed to constitute the necessary commission session due to the lack of a quorum, despite having issued multiple calls.
Given this initial legislative omission, the district judge made several additional requests to the State Congress, insisting on compliance with the order. The judicial pressure eventually bore fruit: in the last convened session of the Constitutional Points Commission, the necessary legal quorum was finally reached. In that session, the majority of the deputies present approved the Commission’s opinion, which proposes the suppression of criminalization and the express repeal of the relevant fractions of the penal code.
Montes de Oca stated that, in her capacity as president of the Commission, she has fulfilled her duty by preparing and approving the opinion. He stressed that the responsibility now falls on the Conference for the Direction and Programming of Legislative Work, which is the body that decides which issues are put to a vote in the Plenary. It will be up to this group of coordinators to schedule the issue and, finally, wait for it to be brought to the Plenary session for final deliberation and voting.
The legislator made a call that transcends the merely judicial: “I believe that regardless of whether the judge binds us or not, the deputies must prioritize the issue of women on the agenda because in more than 20 states of the country they have made progress in this situation and Morelos must be an entity that is at the forefront with the universal human rights of women, that there be no women criminalized or in jail for this circumstance.”
This case exemplifies the complex interaction between state powers and federal justice, highlighting how legislative inaction can be counteracted by judicial mandates for the protection of fundamental rights. The SCJN resolution establishes a paradigm in which access to an essential reproductive right cannot be subject to the discretion or delay of local legislative bodies, ordering the effective provision of the service immediately.
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