The Advance of the Green Wave

The Green Wave (Marea Verde) first took shape in Argentina as a powerful feminist mobilization for the right to legal, safe, and free-of-charge abortion care. It brought together diverse causes and organizations that gradually joined forces over the years to pursue shared goals, including the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (1977), the National Women’s Meetings (1986), the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe, and Free-of-Charge Abortion Care (2005), and the Ni Una Menos movement (2015). Over time, this badge ceased to be the emblem of a local struggle and became a regional symbol of resistance and social justice.

Although the struggle to decriminalize abortion in Mexico dates back to the 1930s, it gained renewed momentum in 2007, when Mexico City legalized voluntary abortion up to 12.6 weeks of gestation.

Since then, progress has been gradual. Oaxaca decriminalized abortion in 2019, and in the years that followed other states did the same: abortion was decriminalized in Hidalgo, Veracruz, Coahuila, Baja California, and Colima in 2021; in Sinaloa, Guerrero, Baja California Sur, and Quintana Roo in 2022; in Puebla, Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, State of Mexico, and Chiapas in 2024; and, as of December 2025, abortion has been decriminalized in Nayarit, Chihuahua, Campeche, Tabasco, Yucatán, and Tlaxcala. At the same time, the green bandana has filled streets across Mexico, bringing visibility to the legal and social barriers to access to safe abortion care in different regions of the country.

A landmark ruling was issued in 2021, when the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation declared unconstitutional the Criminal Code of Coahuila’s ban on abortion without exception and established criteria that are now binding on all judges nationwide.

However, in 2022 decriminalization appeared to stall. In response, GIRE, together with local organizations and collectives, advanced a legal strategy to remove the criminalization of abortion from the criminal codes of 21 states and from the Federal Criminal Code. As a result of this collective effort and of the broader regional impact of the Green Wave, more than two-thirds of Mexico’s federal entities now allow voluntary abortion, at least during the first trimester of pregnancy.

This progress has taken shape through two primary avenues by which abortion may, to date, be decriminalized in Mexico: legislation and judicial rulings.

Click on the map to learn about the rulings and legislative reforms that made it possible to
decriminalize abortion in most federal entities and at the federal level.

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Federation

Federation

Decriminalized

Court order to decriminalize

Criminalized

State Congress has reduced time limit