The Fight for Reproductive Rights in Spain: Our Struggle Is Yours

[ismnotwasm]

This sounds so familiar. And isn't it interesting Spain at least partially liberalized itself after a dictatorship, conservatives are trying to turn back the clock?

The government’s conservative agenda has downplayed the issue of gender violence, despite some very disturbing numbers. In the last ten years, up to 700 women have died in Spain because of domestic violence. And up to 22 percent of women reportedly have suffered abuse at the hands of their partners, according to a recent survey by the European Union. Clearly, this problem persists but rarely appears in Spanish conservatives’ public discourse.

But, without a doubt, the biggest setback we are experiencing, the most disturbing, is the attempt to suppress the right of women to freely terminate a pregnancy. After experiencing years of progress under progressive governments, in 2010 Spain passed a law that bans abortion after 14 weeks’ gestation. This law, similar to those passed in the United States, has reduced the number of abortions practiced in Spain and has significant public support. Also like in the United States, among medical professionals there is a widespread opposition to the restriction on the right of women to safe, legal abortion.

The conservative government now intends to repeal this law and replace it with a new one that would make abortion a crime, except in cases of rape or to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person. Women, then, are treated as minors in that their decision to terminate a pregnancy must be approved as appropriate by a judge, doctor, or psychiatrist, a humiliating process for someone who already is suffering enough.

According to reports, 90 percent of abortions currently practiced in Spain would be illegal under the law the government wants to pass. The only alternative that a Spanish woman with resources would have is to travel to neighboring countries—Portugal, Great Britain, or France, for instance—where abortion is not a crime. But in a country with 26 percent unemployment and a third of children at risk of poverty, many women would be forced to risk their lives—again, like during Franco dictatorship—in a clandestine clinic.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/04/08/fight-reproductive-rights-spain-struggle/