"Feeling free": women criminalized by Mexico's abortion bans celebrate ruling

FILE PHOTO: A woman takes part in a protest to celebrate the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) that declared the criminalization of abortion as unconstitutional, in Saltillo, Mexico September 7, 2021. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - When a nurse arrived at Martha Mendez's bedside in a Mexican hospital carrying a fetus and told the teenager to ask it for forgiveness, Mendez resigned herself to the prison sentence she assumed would inevitably follow.

It was March 2015, and hours earlier Mendez had arrived at the public hospital in the southern state of Veracruz suffering from pain and stomach cramps.