The Government is pushing through, with only its own party’s votes in favour, the new controversial draft bill on abortion, throwing the country back 30 years. There will be no abortion other than in cases of rape, mother’s health and fetal deformations.
Yet even so, the hard-line Catholic voters, who support the party, want the rape exception to be removed as well.
In 1985 the then socialist government introduced changes to the post-Franco laws allowing women to abort within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy should they wish, after that, it had to be for one of the three above reasons. This possibility has been obliterated.
In almost Orwellian doublethink logic, the Secretary for Education and Equality, Sandra Mondeo, said that these changes “protect and defend women and their personal dignity.”
Both the response from the opposition parties and the general public through street protests has been immediate and damning. The PSOE promised that as soon as they are back in power they will overturn the “retrograde” law.
Meanwhile, the reality on the ground is that those that have the money to do it will fly to London for an abortion whilst those that don’t will risk their lives in back-street, illegal clinics… just as they did in the late Franco years.
The law still has to pass through the Senate – equally controlled by the governing party – before coming into effect but to all intents and purposes it’s as good as passed.
(News: Spain)