This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers started the procedures for the reform it proposes to protect abortion in the Constitution. By requesting the relevant opinion from the Council of State, the Government begins the process with which it wants to respond to the anti-abortion offensive of Vox and the PP. “The reactionary wave is leading us to a reduction in rights that we will not tolerate. Measures must be taken to prevent the setback from occurring in the present and the future,” justified the Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, in the press conference after the meeting.
The formula chosen is to include an addition to article 43 of the Magna Carta, referring to the protection of health. Specifically, a fourth point that reads as follows: “The right of women to voluntary interruption of pregnancy is recognized. The exercise of this right, in any case, will be guaranteed by the public powers, ensuring its provision in conditions of effective equality as well as the protection of the fundamental rights of women.”
The chosen route, which must have a qualified majority of the Congress and the Senate, allows the change to be processed through an ordinary procedure without the need to dissolve the Cortes or call a referendum. This is because article 43 is not included among the specially protected constitutional matters, including fundamental rights or the Crown, which require larger majorities, dissolution of the Cortes – and, therefore, calling for elections – and a referendum for their ratification to be reformed.
Moncloa, however, by proposing a modification of article 43, has opted for the most agile and simple route, which will still be very difficult to carry out after the PP has announced its opposition to the protection of abortion in the Constitution. This formula requires a three-fifths majority of both chambers and, if there is no agreement, two-thirds of Congress and an absolute majority of the Senate. Conditions that become practically impossible without the support of those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who this week defined the voluntary interruption of pregnancy as “a benefit of the system”, but “not a fundamental right”. Furthermore, if 10% of the deputies demanded it, it would also have to be put to a referendum.
In the interview that Pedro Sánchez gave this morning to Cadena Ser, he did not rule out the possibility of this public consultation: “It is an option,” he said before emphasizing that “what the reform needs is a majority in parliament with a PP that demonstrates whether it is willing to defend the right to abortion, as Feijóo has pointed out on more than one occasion. If so, he pointed out, the PP “should have no problem” in defending that right in the Charter Magna.
The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, has announced that the Executive will speak “with all the parliamentary groups” to try to move the proposal forward and has stressed that there is still a long way to go, “starting with the Council of State, which will have to technically specify this proposal” and then “the parliamentary debate.”
Redondo has explained that the idea is to recognize the interruption of pregnancy as “a benefit guarantee” and as a service “that must be satisfied within the public health system” and that is why the reform refers to the third chapter, which regulates “the guiding principles of social and economic policy.” Although the right is already recognized in the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, in this way “it is reinforced and protected with this constitutional shield,” stated the minister.
The change would mean including the right to abortion in the article that recognizes “the right to health protection”, and which adds: “It is the responsibility of public powers to organize and protect public health through preventive measures and the necessary benefits and services. The law will establish the rights and duties of everyone in this regard.”
A guaranteed right
The socialists have made a move in recent days and have made abortion a central issue of their strategy after the right reactivated their attacks in a crusade that has had its spearhead in Madrid. Pedro Sánchez’s announcement that he would protect the right to abortion in the Constitution came after the support that Mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida gave to a Vox initiative to force women to be informed of post-abortion syndrome, of which there is no scientific evidence, while Díaz Ayuso refuses to comply with the law and create the registry of conscientious objectors. “Go somewhere else to have an abortion,” he has even exclaimed.
The Government is thus advancing an initiative that seeks to protect the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, decriminalized in 1985 and later expanded in 2010, under one premise: when abortion is in the hands of the PP and Vox, the right is in danger. “What is coming is very hard, there is a drastic cutback in our rights,” Redondo said at the press conference, in which he added: “We are seeing that absolute majorities, for example in Madrid, are capable of overturning and limiting the rights of women.”
In this way, the socialists seek to prevent the right from calling the right into question and to mark a political profile with an issue that enjoys social support. Furthermore, the Constitutional Court endorsed it two years ago in response precisely to the appeal that the Popular Party filed against free abortion in 2010.
However, it is not the first time that this constitutional reform is on the table. Sumar already proposed in March 2024 to follow in the footsteps of France, which had enshrined abortion in its Constitution that same month in the face of the anti-abortion advance globally and after the US Supreme Court overturned the ruling that guaranteed it in the country. However, at that time the socialists rejected it. “The conditions do not exist” to carry it out, said the Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, at the time.
The reform proposed by Sumar meant adding a section to article 43 of the Constitution, which recognizes the right to health protection, with the following wording: “The right to a voluntary interruption of pregnancy that is free, informed, full and universal is recognized. The public powers will guarantee the exercise of this right with absolute respect for their physical autonomy.” Those of Yolanda Díaz registered the proposal last February in Congress, but its taking into consideration has not even been debated despite the fact that in November, the PSOE committed to constitutionally protecting abortion in its 41st Congress.
Ayuso’s refusal
Now, already at the gates of the electoral cycle that is to come, the socialists have taken a step forward in response to the attack from the right, personified these days in the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who refuses to create the registry of conscientious objectors required by law since the 2023 reform. In fact, the Council of Ministers has also approved this Tuesday a request to the regional Executive, the Balearic Islands and Aragon – which have not created the registry either – so that within a period of one month they cease non-compliance with the law. This is a prior notice to initiate legal actions against regional governments.
The objective of these lists is that the autonomous communities can know which professionals they have in order to reorganize health services to be able to offer services in centers of the public health network, something that only happens exceptionally. Especially in some territories such as Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia, Andalusia and Extremadura, where the number of voluntary terminations of pregnancy in the public does not reach 1%. At the state level, the percentage is 21.26% while the rest are referred to concerted clinics, a mode of operation that the abortion law seeks to change.
Given the publication of the latest data and the pressure from the Government for the missing communities to launch the registry of objectors, Ayuso has opened a new front against Pedro Sánchez. “I am not going to make a list of doctors. Never, never,” said the Madrid president in the control session of the Madrid Assembly, in which she accused the Executive of promoting abortion. The Government, for its part, has already announced that it would use “all legal instruments at its disposal” to enforce the law, “also in Madrid,” specified the president, who warned of the possibility of even reaching the Constitutional Court “if necessary.”
At the same time that Ayuso was castled in his position, the national leadership of the PP tried to close ranks with a note made public on social networks in which Alberto Núñez Feijóo reiterates his “clear and known position” on abortion: “I will always guarantee that any woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy can do so with the best medical and psychological care, in accordance with the laws,” read the popular leader’s text, aware that there are different positions in the party. on voluntary termination of pregnancy. This Monday, however, the popular leader announced that he would repeal the obligation to register objectors if he governs and even pointed to a “opposite list” of doctors who perform abortions.
Source: www.eldiario.es
