“Let your daughter do what she wants.” With these words, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, now defends that minors under 16 and 17 years of age can abort without the need for the consent of their parents. The Madrid leader thus aligns herself with part of the reform of the abortion law that the Government is finalizing to eliminate that requirement of parental authorization that was already included in the 2010 law approved by the Executive of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, but that later, in 2015, it was recovered again by Mariano Rajoy. Ayuso’s new position thus supposes an amendment to the entirety of his own speech from just a few months ago, but also to the political and judicial strategy carried out by his party, the PP, since 2010, and which is maintained twelve years later under the presidency of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The legal team of the conservative formation, then headed by former minister Federico Trillo, presented that same 2010 before the Constitutional Court an appeal against Zapatero’s law that eliminated parental consent. In the textwhich has not yet received a response from the aforementioned court but which has been maintained for twelve years with the different leaders of the PP -and now with Feijóo-, the popular consider that this right to voluntarily interrupt their pregnancies for women of 16 and 17 years is “manifestly unconstitutional” and that “the guarantees of the pregnant minor are reduced.”
The PP also points out in its appeal that withdrawing the obligation of parental consent “prevents parents from exercising their right to educate their children, it also prevents them from providing assistance and family support in the face of an event of great importance and reduces the guarantees of the life of the unborn”. “This provision of the new law is a flagrant violation of the rights of parents to have their children receive an education in accordance with their own convictions and ignores the responsibilities that are inherent in the exercise of parental authority,” said in 2010 the direction of the popular
The arguments are very similar to those used by Feijóo himself two weeks ago. “If the legislation in Spain prohibits the consumption of alcohol by a minor under 18 years of age, it seems reasonable that this legislation requests parental permission for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy,” said the leader of the PP, who considers that if minors do not count that decision to her parents occurs “a breakdown of affectivity” at a “very difficult” moment, which is when a young woman “must make a decision of that category”.
The current leadership of the PP claims, therefore, the brief reform of the abortion law that the Government of Mariano Rajoy approved in 2015 – after verifying that a broader and more restrictive one, the one defended by the then Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, did not have sufficient social support – which repealed part of the 2010 reform, recovering parental consent for minors under 16 and 17 years of age who want to have an abortion, and which is the current text pending the counter-reform proposed by the progressive government.
This Tuesday, Feijóo himself used the same argument – ”It does not seem reasonable that a minor who cannot drive or vote, can have an abortion without even the knowledge of her parents” – but went a step further by proposing that it be a court of family who decides in case of discrepancies between the woman and her parents.
Ayuso, who now disagrees with the strategy of his party’s leadership for the last twelve years, also supported it just a few months ago. In May, in an interview on Telecincothe Madrid president considered “tremendous that parents cannot give their opinion about their grandchildren” in reference to the Executive’s plans to eliminate parental consent so that minors under 16 and 17 years of age can abort.
For Ayuso, the Government’s plan implied “that women are not asked for reflection and tranquility to decide.” He also considered only four months ago that the Equality reform raised abortion “as a contraceptive method.” “I would never criminalize anyone for doing it [por abortar]but I think it’s being done as a debate of spoiled people,” he said, before performing a kind of imitation: “‘Oh, it’s a hindrance! Take it off! That’s yours! It’s your body, your such. ..!’ I think the debate is more serious.”
Just eight months before the regional elections in which she will once again try to endorse her position as president of Madrid, Ayuso has substantially modified her speech, which now collides with twelve years of judicial strategy by the PP. In her opinion, parents should not force their 16 or 17-year-old daughters to have an abortion, although she has defended that they should be aware that they are going to make that decision. “I think you have to abort. If you are clear that you do not want to continue with it, you cannot force anyone to lead a life contrary to what they have wanted, ”she said last day 1 in a interview on Onda Cero.
The Madrid president considered that although the father must have the knowledge, he cannot pressure her to abort or not: “Deserved respect for her daughter to do what she wants.” Ayuso added that she is in favor of “legal and safe abortion” but also “infrequent”, for which she asked for more “education, more awareness and more talking to young people, who are very lonely.”
“Indeed there are different positions, personal positions, and the only thing that was effectively modified by President Rajoy is the article that states that minors need parental consent to abort,” said Feijóo himself shortly after, trying to play down the turn taken by Ayuso, which collides with his own vision on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.It seems “reasonable” to the leader of the PP to wait for the Constitutional Court to express itself about the resource presented in 2010.
In any case, Feijóo defended the discrepancies with Ayuso with the following words: “What we agree on is that a minor cannot have an abortion without the parents’ knowledge. Many party members will say that also with the consent. The law that approved the PP says that when there is an argument between the minor and the parents, it is the family court that decides who is right. This week he returned to the matter: “It is a very complex matter. Because there are the rights of the unborn child, which we must protect, and there is also the decision of the mother, who has to make an important decision for her life” .
Meanwhile, the Madrid president used her harshest tone against the left in the Assembly. “A nonsense is what you are doing with the youth, to those who are told alone, drunk and have an abortion as many times as they want,” he charged from the rostrum, where he also defended the freedom of doctors who so wish not to perform abortions. and that “you cannot erase the history of a woman who has undergone surgery, an abortion.”
“We have ended a life, we have aborted it, because it is not interrupted,” said Ayuso, who considers that “it cannot be that we are in Spain right now with figures of 100,000 abortions a year, while there are so many families who want to adopt, who have needs.”
Add Comment