After learning that the number of declared abortions in 2023 in Spain has exceeded the barrier of 100,000, the draft protocol for the registration of professionals who declare themselves objectors to the practice of abortions is being prepared.
It should be noted that the number of actual abortions exceeds the number of recorded abortions, given that many chemical abortions are not declared or recorded. The number of these undeclared abortions in which drugs such as mifepristone or misoprostol are used increases every year, because abortion pills can be taken at home, without requiring hospital care unless complications arise, which can be serious.
The creation of registers of objectors with the purported aim of guaranteeing the provision of abortion from public centres to those who request it, implies an intrusion into their freedom of thought and privacy, forcing certain professionals to make public their position on issues that affect their conscience.
Instead, a list of health personnel who agree to perform abortions could have been drawn up, which would be voluntary and not obligatory, not forcing those who object to these practices to make public their criteria of conscience.
The possible use of these future lists of objectors for purposes other than ensuring the provision of abortion, such as excluding them from certain jobs or applying any other type of discrimination against them, highlights the injustice of this measure, promoted by the current Minister of Health, a staunch defender of abortion and its extension.
Some of the expressions used by the minister to defend the creation of these registers must be clarified.
Firstly, talking about “free and safe abortion” constitutes a manipulation that must be exposed. It is not free because no alternatives are provided to the woman who requests an abortion, nor is she informed of the risks and consequences; the latest reform of the abortion law eliminated the obligation to provide information to women before having an abortion. Nor is it safe, because as related research shows, abortion significantly increases the risk of suffering physical and psychological consequences in women who have an abortion, being greater in the case of repeated abortions.
The minister speaks of those who oppose abortion as those who “put the political battle back on our bodies”, surprisingly ignoring that the body on which the action is taken to cause death is not that of the pregnant woman, but that of her child, a person different from her.
The proliferation of euphemisms and manipulations in language when it comes to talking about abortion tries to hide the intolerable drama of justifying a mother killing her child. Talking about voluntary interruption of pregnancy, safe abortion, women’s freedom, or sexual and reproductive health are euphemisms that hide a violent and unjust act, due to which more than 100,000 human beings have lost their lives last year in our country.
Julio Tudela Cuenca – Director of the Bioethics Observatory – Catholic University of Valencia
