Edward Murillo
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, October 11, 2022, p. 13
Unanimously, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) invalidated the call right to life
, included in the Aguascalientes Constitution last year. To date, 16 states in the country still maintain similar provisions in their fundamental laws.
The highest court expelled from the national legal order the portion that defined the human person from conception to natural death
in article two of the Magna Carta of said entity.
The rapporteur minister Juan Luis González Alcántara Carrancá explained that the state legislative powers cannot define the notion of person by altering the foundational parameter of human rights.
The Congress of the aforementioned entity also exceeded its constitutional powers by protecting life from conception, as this is a significant risk against the constitutional and conventional rights of women, mainly
Gonzalez added.
The decision of the SCJN was based on precedents of similar cases, in which the ministers also declared the invalidity of the right to life
contained in the constitutions of Sinaloa, Nuevo León and Veracruz. Supporting González’s project, Minister Javier Laynez explained that the state legislature cannot define the meaning of person, since that is part of the legal guarantees, which can only be limited by the federal legislature or through international conventions.
The definition is opposed to a whole series of rights, such as reproductive autonomy, health, and non-discrimination of women
Laynez added.
For his part, Minister Luis María Aguilar Morales warned that this right to life
is used as a pretext to violate citizen guarantees: in reality, what is being limited or delimited is the right of people to health, to the spacing of their children and to non-discrimination. That is what, deep down, is being sought with this rule
. The sentence will be effective as of its notification to Congress and the government of Aguascalientes.
