That's how I see it. As a developer, you still used 32-bit math operations in assembly and the CPU executed them as a series of 16-bit ops. The details are abstracted away. IMO, that made it 32 bits.
By analogy, SATA is a serial protocol, but you wouldn't ordinarily refer to it as a 1-bit bus.
By analogy, SATA is a serial protocol, but you wouldn't ordinarily refer to it as a 1-bit bus.