A recent ruling recognizing marital rape as a crime could aid the many Mexican women who are sexually violated by their spouses. An estimated 45 percent of all Mexican women suffer some type of abuse at home.

Photo courtesy of Packard Foundation.

“Cynthia” had been severely beaten, repeatedly stabbed and sexually assaulted by her husband. But when he went to jail, he was only charged for the physical abuse.

In the Mexican penal code, marital rape was not considered a crime. Moreover, the Mexican Supreme Court had declared that forced intercourse between spouses was not rape, but the exercise of the marital right to sex.

“Cynthia” could have been doubly victimized — by her husband’s wrath and by a justice system that had no legal arguments to charge him for sexual assault.

But today, her case has helped widen the definition of rape and expand the grounds for divorce in Mexico. As a result, women are also better equipped to seek lawful protection against their abusers and demand legal abortion.

This November, the Mexican Supreme Court, which ruled in 1994 that violently forcing a spouse to have sex was the “abusive exercise of a conjugal right,” overturned its previous decision by a unanimous ruling. It declared that forced sex within marriage is to be considered rape and punishable by law.

The 1994 decision supported the notion that marriage was for reproduction’s sake and sexual relations were an obligation within that relationship. Now, the high court states clearly that the right legally protected in this decision is women’s sexual freedom to decide when and with whom to have intercourse. This right is not to be lost within marriage.

The unanimous reversal is a significant move in Mexico, where all forms of domestic violence are rife; research from the Mexican National Institute of Women in 2003 suggests that 45 percent of the country’s women experience it in their lifetimes.

The ruling will help make the health and legal sectors into less hostile, intimidating spaces for women who need help.

It is also a first step toward opening up legal clauses for ending an unwanted pregnancy resulting from conjugal rape. All 31 states and Mexico City allow abortion in cases of rape, the only indication common to all states.

The ruling puts Mexico in line with other many nations that recognize marital rape as a crime, including Australia, Bulgaria, France, Nepal and South Africa. At the 1995 U.N. women’s conference in Beijing, all countries represented in the General Assembly, including Mexico, directly addressed marital rape in a resolution that said women — and especially wives — can say no to sex as they choose. According to a Nov. 17 New York Times article, India and Malaysia are among the few other countries that lag behind in recognizing marital rape as a crime.

But making marital rape illegal globally has been a glacially slow, nation-by-nation process. In the United States, marital rape was legal in all 50 states until the mid-1970s. Some U.S. and Mexican states make distinctions between marital rape and stranger rape.

As more countries adopt marital-rape laws that serve the victim and not the offender, Ipas is making sure that news about the ruling gets to Mexican women as well as the health, government, and law-enforcement sectors. It must work with local congresses and general attorneys’ offices at the state level to guarantee that this ruling is translated to local laws.

Ipas became involved with “Cynthia,” when it was filming a documentary about sexual-violence survivors. With the support of Ipas Mexico and other concerned organizations that advocated for her right to safety, “Cynthia” was able to stop her husband’s release. And with this Supreme Court decision, “Cynthia” is helping to ensure that women like her no longer have to face a law that blatantly denies their security and rights.

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For more information, contact media@ipas.org