Abortion reform in Spain covers up ideological interventionism on sexuality

The abortion law reform that the Spanish government has prepared does not bring about a significant change in the requirements for abortion. Its most important effects will be of a different order, as the new text legalizes a certain conception of sexuality and enables public authorities to promote and implement it in education, health and all public policies.

The draft law was presented to public opinion as new abortion law,

Thus, the draft obliges the public authorities to support feminist NGOs that work in the so-called “reproductive health” (art. 6), guarantee universal access to practices and means of planning reproduction in social services, educational centers and pharmacies (arts. 6 and 7), finance publicly all types of contraceptive methods (third additional provision), to impose sex education – as understood by the law itself – throughout the educational system, including students, parents, teachers and health professionals (arts. 9 et seq.) , finance public gender-focused research on sexual health (art. bis), and promote and finance institutional advertising in matters of the law (art. ), etc.

We are then faced with a new law filled with administrative interventionism put at the service of a peculiar conception of sexuality that seems to forget that, in a democracy, one can express an opinion on sexuality in freedom, and that the State cannot make its own a certain idea of ​​the person and their sexuality in order to impose it on the whole of society. The content of this draft is incompatible with the ideological pluralism that the Constitution guarantees, and reveals the totalitarian temptation underlying current theories of gender, as has been denounced from various academic, religious and social instances (for example, the feminist platform against the erasure of women), both in Spain and in many other countries.

The strategy of “integral laws”

From a strictly legal point of view, this draft corresponds to the model of the so-called “integral laws” (time and time again criticized by the General Council of the Judiciary in its reports on this type of rules). These are laws that intend to fully regulate a matter from a monolithic ideological perspective and for that they establish precepts that interfere in matters regulated by other laws without modifying them, thus generating great insecurity and difficulties of interpretation about the validity and/or prevalence. of one or other laws. This technique was used in matters such as gender violence, childhood, LGBTI or the trans phenomenon; and is now used again: legislation is legislated on topics already regulated in education, health, work, etc. with criteria different from those of the substantive laws in the matter, but without modifying them. Thus, an attempt is made to introduce the peculiar ideological perspective of these integral laws in all types of subject, assuming that the later political and media activism (and even the judicial) will end up imposing a reinterpretation of traditional laws in the new ideological keys sown by the integral laws.

This is, on a national scale, the same technique used internationally in decades to provoke – with some success so far – a reinterpretation of human rights in the key of gender secularism: where a treaty says, for example, “right to life”, a committee, or a resolution, or a declaration of principles who knows who, interprets that we are talking about the right to abortion. Immediately afterwards, they cite this committee, or resolution, or declaration of principles, as if it were the treaty itself, and claim that this is the source of the international law applicable in the matter. This phenomenon was qualified as depredation of human rights , that is, as their kidnapping and reinterpretation by a clearly anti-humanist ideology, contrary to the letter and to the spirit of the original texts, which are the authentic source of international law in the matter.

The explanatory memorandum of the preliminary draft is an example of this phenomenon: it presents the contents of this new law as a mandatory application of international human rights law with a clearly limited respect for the truth of sources, and with express manipulation of them. It is worth remembering that no norm of international law, whether universal or regional, no convention or treaty, recognizes abortion as a human right, nor does it oblige to legalize it. No international convention or treaty recognizes either the gender perspective or the so-called sexual and reproductive health. No rule of international law endorses or advocates the imposition of a concrete vision of sexuality by the state.

Some particular issues

Aside from the aforementioned changes in the legal framework for abortion, the draft also introduces some concrete normative novelties in other matters that we comment below:

— The regulation of the right to conscientious objection of health personnel is modified with the same restrictive keys used in the recent euthanasia law, creating a register of objectors in which the desire to object must be recorded in advance and in writing.

— The autonomous communities are obliged to guarantee access to abortion in public centers close to the home of the interested party, to avoid what they call “lack of equity territorial” in the practice of these interventions.

— Comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care services are created, as well as a telephone 2015 hours to inform about abortion.

— Public support for contraception is increased: free of charge the morning-after pill, which will be distributed in the centers of health and other specialized services; free distribution of barrier contraceptives in educational centers; stimulation of male hormonal contraception; public funding of long-acting reversible contraceptives; mandatory availability of emergency contraceptives in pharmacies, etc.

— Encouragement of sex education at school in all years in the gender key, in line with the latest education law (ley Celáa) and requirement of training in abortion in the legal sciences, health, education and social sciences careers, as well as in the points of public tenders linked to these careers.

— Creation of menstrual health as a health standard with consequent education on the subject every year, public funding of menstrual products and its free distribution in educational centers, prisons, etc.

— Regulation of State responsibility in the face of so-called “obstetric or gynecological violence”, that is, actions without informed consent of patients, abortion and forced sterilization or contraception etc. This legal provision draws attention and has been criticized by medical organizations as it refers to practices that are already illegal and seems to insinuate that they are still something habitual and urgently prohibited.

— Recognition of surrogacy [i. e., barriga de aluguel (n. t.)] as violence against women, but with the only and timid practical consequence of prohibiting the advertising of intermediation agencies in this matter (prohibition ineffective at the time of the internet).

— Creation of the situation of temporary incapacity by disabling menstruation, abortion – voluntary or spontaneous – and from the thirty-ninth week of pregnancy onwards.