WUNRN
SPAIN - PROPOSED ABORTION
RESTRICTIONS FACE BACKLASH
MADRID — Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s proposal to enact
some of the toughest abortion restrictions in Europe has exposed his already
unpopular government to a building political backlash and criticism from the
European Parliament, while reinvigorating his Socialist opponents and opening
divisions in his own conservative Popular Party.
On Sunday, demonstrators gathered in downtown Madrid to
protest the government’s health care cuts and the abortion proposal, which was
introduced in December and would allow the termination of a pregnancy only if
it was the result of rape or if having the baby would significantly endanger
the mother’s health. It would not allow abortions if the fetus was deformed.
“Those who give birth should be deciding,” said Pilar
Gómez, an administrator of the Los Yébenes health care center in Madrid. “After
all the advances that we had made, we’re now being taken right back to the days
of Franco.”
The current abortion law, adopted under the previous
Socialist administration, allows women to end a pregnancy within the first 14
weeks and beyond that period in cases of life-threatening problems related to
the fetus.
The debate in Spain began about the same time that a law in
Ireland, another Roman Catholic country, set out for the first time the
conditions under which abortions would be allowed. The Irish law, which was prompted
in part by the death of a woman who was refused an abortion, allows
termination of a pregnancy in cases of a threat to the mother’s life. It leaves
Malta as the only European Union country that has a complete ban on abortion.
On Wednesday, Elena Valenciano, the deputy leader of the
Socialist Party, argued that Mr. Rajoy’s government, which up to now had been
focused on Spain’s ailing economy, was also taking a “real step back in
history” with a proposed law that she described as an affront to women.
She predicted that the law would turn on Mr. Rajoy by
dividing his party rather than strengthening his electoral appeal among
conservatives. Already, some senior members of his Popular Party have urged the
prime minister to soften the legislation.
Still, Benigno Blanco, the president of the Spanish Family Forum, an association that
has campaigned against abortion and represents about four million families,
welcomed the legislation as “a very important step” that “should guarantee
Spain becomes the first country in Western Europe to prioritize the right to
life and to fight back against the social normalization of abortion.”
The abortion debate has transcended Spain’s borders.
Protests were recently held outside Spain’s embassy in Paris, and France’s
minister for women’s affairs, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, said it was “terrible to
see Spain about to take a step back on the right to decide over one’s own
body.”
Last week, the European Parliament held a heated session
over what Spain’s planned U-turn would mean for the rest of the Continent. In
Portugal, news media have started speculating about whether the country’s
abortion clinics could cope with an influx of women from neighboring Spain.
Even as left-leaning politicians and women’s associations
have expressed dismay at the draft law, the government has insisted that it was
merely following through on Mr. Rajoy’s campaign pledges from 2011, when the Popular Party swept into office after
voters punished the Socialists for their economic mismanagement. Spain pulled out of its two-year recession in
the third quarter of 2013, but still struggles with an unemployment rate of 26
percent and anemic domestic consumption.
Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party has a comfortable majority in Parliament. But the Socialists have urged the government to allow voting on the abortion law to take place by secret ballot, to help encourage dissenting conservative lawmakers to break ranks.
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SPAIN'S ALARMING ABORTION DEBATE
January 17, 2014 - Spain’s conservative Popular Party, led
by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, is pushing a bill that would restrict
reproductive rights so severely that many women would be forced to travel
abroad to seek abortions or turn to illegal and risky procedures. The bill
would allow abortion only in the case of rape or grave danger to the health of
the mother as determined by two independent medical professionals. Minors who
seek abortions would need parental approval. Fetal abnormalities would no
longer qualify as a reason to terminate a pregnancy. If the bill is passed,
Spain will become the first member of the European Union to retreat from a
decades-long trend toward safe and legal abortion.
Fortunately, the bill is meeting stiff resistance in
Spain’s Parliament. Protests have erupted in cities across Spain. The Socialist
Workers Party, under whose watch a 2010 bill liberalizing access to abortion
was passed, is fiercely opposed. Even some members of the Popular Party have
revolted, with the party leader for the Extremadura region, José Antonio
Monago, pressing for changes.
The debate is moving beyond Spain. Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón,
the main architect of the bill and Spain’s minister of justice, has vowed to
take his anti-abortion crusade to the European Parliament and shatter “the myth
of the moral superiority of the left.” Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former head of
France’s far-right National Front party, has hailed the Spanish bill. Both
parties are fighting to gain seats in May elections for the European
Parliament, guaranteeing that the issue will play a central role.
Already, leftist parties in the European Parliament have
joined forces to reject the restrictions in the Spanish law. Mikael Gustafsson,
chairman of the Parliament’s committee on women’s rights and gender equality,
condemned the retrograde bill. Parliament can do even more to protect women in
Spain, and all of Europe, by trying again to pass a report, narrowly defeated
in December, that would designate a woman’s right to abortion a fundamental
human right.
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