The past 20th of December, the Government of Spain approved in its Council of Ministers a draft of a law that threatens the right of women to choose and looks to push them towards maternity without taking their wishes into account.
The Draft of the “Organic Law for the Protection of the Life of the Conceived and the Rights of the Pregnant Woman” is the most serious attack on Spanish women in the last 30 years. The Popular Party looks exclusively to satisfy its most retrograde and conservative electorate, a veritable fundamentalist lobby willing to do whatever it takes to quench their sectarianism. The right to choose and sexual and reproductive rights are fundamental rights that should be defended and promoted through an egalitarian education. The Government, instead of prioritizing the general interest and coexistence within the constitutional framework, has adopted the unacceptable attitude of legislating on the basis of religious morality, undermining the decision-making capacity of women.
After many years, in 2010, Spain managed to distinguish itself in the defense of civil rights with a pioneering Law on Deadlines on a global scale. A law that managed to generate a wide consensus in Parliament, with the exception of the Popular Party, as well as among health and legal professionals for its support of sexual and reproductive education and for its advances in its treatment of women within the democratic system. This broad consensus was superseded by a draft law that the Government has only agreed upon with the Episcopal Conference.
The actual Law on Deadlines is based on basic principles like the respect for women and their life – with specific support provided by professionals specialized in the subject matter from infancy to maturity. It is a preventative law, with legal and health guarantees for women, does not discriminate on the basis of economic capacity, and the immense majority has not asked for its reform. On the contrary, the draft law segregates on account of the need to pay for travel to other countries in order to achieve what is denied at home, or provokes clandestine and unsafe abortions, and places us at a disadvantage with respect to the legislation of our European neighbourhood.
Repealing the Law on Deadlines is a social regression and a risk for us. The regulation that they want to impose not only will not reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, but will also increase the suffering of women who find themselves in this situation. The PP government wants to convert into a crime for all what is simply a sin for some. In 1995, the United Nations in its “Action Platform of Beijing” declared that the human rights of women include their right to exercise choice and decide freely and responsibly with regards to their own sexuality, including their sexual and reproductive health. It called on all countries to elaborate legislation guaranteeing these rights. Contrary to this, the new “Law for the Protection of the Life of the Conceived and the Rights of the Pregnant Woman” only permits then interruption of pregnancies in two cases, rape and risk of death for the mother. Where is the power to choose if it is the correct moment to be a mother? Currently, laws specifying deadlines exist in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden and Portugal. Europe today looks to Spain scandalized by a counter-reform that supposes an incomprehensible restriction of liberty and a return to situations prior to the Law of 1985.
For all these reasons, and on account of this latest blow, the Socialist Youth of Spain declares:
- Our volition to defend liberty and the right of women to choose over their own body and motherhood. We will not accept that they be once more treated as citizens incapable of deciding after so many years of struggle. Women are qualified to decide in a free society and we will not permit that this right be taken away.
- We will not give our consent to the Partido Popular continuing to interfere in the autonomy of women, looking exclusively to return them to their homes. We fight for a dignified society, living together in equality, and without part of the citizenry being submitted to the dictates and decisions of the other part.
- We defend the right to choose of women and support the current Law on Deadlines, which is being applied with total normality. Its repeal does not respond to a social demand, but rather to sectarian and exclusionary interests.
- We will promote our oppositin to this draft law within the international community, especially in Europe, asking our comrades, deputies, and European leaders to disseminate news of this unreasonable attack on liberties that our country is suffering.
- Ultimately, we will exhaust all the means that are necessary to demand the justice with which Spanish women deserve to be treated and to block this frontal and direct assault on their autonomy. We will not stop until we have deterred all those operations that seek to develop a tyrannical model based on their archaic ultraconservative thought.
