THE streets of cities across Latin America were bathed in green on Thursday as tens of thousands of women marched to commemorate International Safe Abortion Day.

Latin American feminists have spent decades fighting to roll back strict prohibitions, although there are still few countries with a total ban, like El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.

In Mexico, marchers celebrated the recent decision by Mexico’s Supreme Court to decriminalise abortions at the federal level. 

In Argentina, marchers had a more sombre tone, worrying that the strength of a far-right presidential candidate going into elections in October could signal peril after years of work by feminists.

Women on the march also raised the alarm about the region's high rates of gender-based violence.

Green smoke floated over a roaring crowd of thousands of women in Mexico City who waved green handkerchiefs, which have become the symbol of Latin America’s “green wave” abortion movement. 

Signs reading: “It’s my decision” and “free and safe abortions for everyone” speckled the crowd.

The march came just weeks after Mexico’s Supreme Court knocked down all federal criminal penalties for abortion, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights. 

The move will also require federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

Fernanda Castro, an organiser at the Information Group on Reproductive Choice (GIRE), the women’s rights organisation that brought forward the lawsuit before Mexico’s High Court, said that there was now another important fight to decriminalise “abortion in the minds of the people.”

While 20 Mexican states still have abortion bans on the books, the decision by the Supreme Court greatly expanded access to the procedure in a country where reproductive laws were long defined by its religious and conservative roots.

Brazil may be the next to decriminalise abortion.

Currently, abortion is a crime with exceptions for cases of rape and birth defects in a foetus, but a case before the nation’s Supreme Court could potentially decriminalise the procedure up to 12 weeks of gestation.

“The green wave is going to keep growing and (Brazilian women) are not alone,” Ms Castro said.

In Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, the demonstration was marked with unease.

As elections loom in October, many fear their legal gains may soon get rolled back as far-right candidate Javier Milei has promised to hold a referendum to repeal the decriminalisation of abortion nationwide approved by Congress in 2022.

Art student Sara Rivas said: “We are not going to leave the streets, because these gains were won in the streets.”