The amparo’s process against excluding legal structures: on the legal termination of pregnancy in Mexico

Abstract

Abortion is a crime in Mexico. However, all criminal codes of the country admit at least one exclusion cause. Notwithstanding, most of the public health acts do not contemplate abortion as a health service, even in those cases foreseen as exclusion causes in criminal law. In this paper it is argued that this kind of control on women’s bodies, constitutionally constitutes an excluding legal structure derived by the legal health regime, which is located in structures of dominance and that violates several human rights, two of which are ius cogens norms. From this analysis, and from a perspective of critical garantismo, the possibilities of amparo’s process against excluding legal structures are discussed.