Abortion is synonymous with controversy all across the globe.  Well, perhaps everywhere except in post-human France and in the social paradise called Scandinavia, but in Spain the debate has boiled up in recent weeks and brought out more than one episode of extreme behavior, suspicious dealings and even the downright oddball.

Before getting to the good stuff, it is worth setting the scene.  The Spanish government has proposed to alter the standing abortion law to allow women to freely choose to abort in the first 14 weeks of a pregnancy, a time period that can be extended up to 22 weeks in the case of fetal deformity or risk to the mother’s health.

Under current law, the right to abort does not exist, but there are exceptions allowed in cases of rape, fetal deformity or if the physical or psychological health of the woman are at risk.  In the first two cases, there are time limits of 12 and 22 weeks, respectively, but in the last case of risk to the mother, there is no time limit whatsoever.  The government and pro-choice advocates argue that the new law will not only recognize a woman’s right to choose, but it will also stop late-term abortions.

The Church and the Right are up in arms and have already held a massive anti-abortion rally in Madrid against any liberalization of the current law.  The Partido Popular has fallen in line and wants to enforce the current law to the letter and tighten the “legal loophole” of the existing provision for risk to the psychological health of the woman, which, according to the pro-life supporters, private clinics use basically to give abortions to any woman who wants one.

Reforming the 1985 abortion law has been a half-hearted promise of the Socialist Party for some time – it tended to be trotted out for a campaign and then quietly put back in its cage once the general elections were won and the governing had to begin yet again.  Zapatero, whose legacy, if for nothing else, has already been firmly founded on his progressive policies towards women (la ley de igualdad, an entire new ministry with the same name, streamlining divorce, the “baby-check”, etc.) needs to do something instead of taking blows from the recession, and the best thing about this reform is that it comes free of cost (and so Esquerra Republicana and Izquierda Unida’s push to get the state health care system to pick up the tab for abortions is most likely a pipe dream, like so many of their great ideas turn out to be).

Overzealous agents

In 2007, the Guardía Civil investigated the Isadora abortion clinic in Madrid for supposedly practicing illegal abortions.  The police questioned over twenty women who had been patients of the clinic, and the Comunidad de Madrid went as far as to write, but never execute, an order to close down the Isadora.  The clinic, for its part, denied any wrongdoing and accused both the police and the regional government headed by the PP’s Esperanza Aguirre of systematic harassment.

Fast forward to now.  The judge in charge of the case brought against the Isadora ruled to acquit the clinic and its patients since no illegal practices were found.  Additionally, and this is where it gets juicy, it seems that the police did not exactly follow correct investigative procedures.  The original justification for looking into the clinic was based on “feeling something fishy was going on” when agents found a sealed disposal container outside the clinic.  The agents then opened the container and found dead fetuses inside that they deemed “to be big”.  The police used this layman guess as an excuse to dig into the practices of the clinic and its patients and consequently set off a wave of anti-abortion protests that stifled the PSOE’s originally reform attempt.

PNV and pork

For the first time in its history, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco, the Basque nationalist party, will vote in block to support the reform of the abortion law proposed by the PSOE.  In the past, the PNV has let each of its members vote according to their individual conscience, like Convergència i Unió says it will do this time around.

One could be cynical and see this as part of the deal between the PSOE and the PNV that got the government’s budget through Congress recently.  Euskadi did walk away with 85 million euros in what would be called “pork” in the US in exchange for the votes of its six members of congress.

Rent support for the unborn

Teetering on the inane/insane tightrope comes the most recent goodie from the Comunidad de Valencia, where vicepresidente and head of the Consejería de Medio Ambiente, Agua, Urbanismo y Vivienda Juan Cotino is sponsoring a bill that would consider embryos on par with children for both national and local government housing aid programs.  Under the proposed bill, families would be able to count pregnant woman as two people (mom plus kid) when applying for rent subsidies or placement in social housing.

This is a somewhat nice twist on the American pro-life “fetal homicide laws” many US states have passed that define the murder of a pregnant woman as a double homicide in a Trojan horse effort to set a precedent for the eventual prosecution of a woman who aborts her own child.  With it sure to pass in the PP-controlled Comunidad government, the bill is an obvious attempt to throw the weirdest of monkey wrenches into the PSOE’s abortion reform effort.  It is worth remembering that the government run by Francisco Camps has already pursued such absurd flanking maneuvers against Zapatero’s progressive agenda as deciding to teach the new subject and bane of the Right, Ciudadanía, in English so that no child could be indoctrinated by its leftist civics lessons — in the process unwittingly (?) conceding that inglés is not exactly Valencia’s strong suit.

photos: Petezin; HazteOir.org