In Spain, the lower house of parliament passed a bill that will allow 16- and 17-year-old girls to undergo abortions without parental notification. The “Organic Law on Sexual and Reproductive Health” also eliminates a three-day period of “reflection” that was previously required of abortion-seeking women, and it prohibits physicians from offering information on maternal resources unless abortion seekers specifically ask. The bill, which passed with a vote of 190-154 and five abstentions, still has to pass the upper house of parliament for final approval.
As Spanish News Today reports, parental notification laws were originally abolished in 2010, but were then reinstated in 2015 under a more conservative government. This legislation reinstates the old law, allowing minors as young as 16 to get an abortion. The bill also plans to create a “judicial defender” to advocate for those under age 16 who want abortions, but whose parents refuse to give permission.
“We are restoring the right of women between the ages of 16 and 18 to decide about their own bodies,” said Spain’s equality minister, Irene Montaro. “And we also affirm that the state recognizes and respects the autonomy of women to decide that we do not doubt their decisions.”
According to El Mundo, the law requires abortions to be committed in every public health center in the country. Though conscientious objection is allowed, a registry will be created with the names of all medical professionals who refuse to commit or assist in abortions.
Earlier this year, Spain’s Catholic Bishops criticized the proposed law, as it allows minors to access abortion and removes a mandatory waiting period.
“Abortion is never a right,” Archbishop Luis Argüello García, the bishops’ secretary-general and spokesman, said in a September tweet. “This new abortion law suppresses the prior information and reflection that are essential for making such a serious decision. It is all symptomatic of a way of governing.”
Argüello also decried the country’s abortion laws in an August interview. “In a situation of demographic winter, when advances in science make it possible to say unequivocally that a new life has begun, it’s frankly appalling to propose abortion as a right and try to resolve the ensuing conflicts by annihilating the weakest,” he said in an interview with the Valladolid archdiocesan radio, according to Crux.
