Irene Montero, Minister of Equality in Spain has disclosed plans to reverse the 2015 reform that mandates young women to get permission from their parents before they can terminate a pregnancy.
The Minister revealed this on Wednesday in the Congress of Deputies with a document titled, A Plan to Repeal The 2015 Reform Of The Abortion Law. This is geared towards changing the law to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to seek abortion without parental permission.
In 2015, the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP), which had tried to curb the high rate of abortions in the first trimester and take Spain back to ‘case-based system’ changed the country’s abortion laws and mandated parental consent for those aged between 16 and 18.
Abortion was first authorised in Spain in 1985 in cases of rape or physical damage to the mother or child.
The purview of the law was however intensified in 2010 by the last socialist government, which permitted abortion up to 22 weeks in cases of foetal deformities.
While in 2014, Mariano Rajoy, former Prime Minister issued plans to limit abortion to cases of rape or where the mother’s health was at serious risk.
This drive, was however, refuted, following a widespread protest from women’s associations and resistance form within the ranks of the PP itself, forcing the party to take back its proposal on the issue of parental consent.
Ms. Montero, told Spain’s lower house of parliament on Wednesday that, the reform was ‘more than necessary’. She also said that steps have been taken to change the law so that ‘all women have the right to decide over their bodies.’
She added that other measures would be put in place, as more focus will be on sexual education which she described as a ‘vaccine’ in the fight against gender violence.
The law change would also include individual’s right to the ‘newest forms’ of contraception, the minister told a parliamentary commission.
The Accredited Abortion Clinic Association (ACAI), says, the need for parental consent has ‘limited the only legal option for minors without parental care to access an abortion,’ affecting between 400 and 500 women in this age group every year.
Adenike Omosanya
Photo Credits: mallorcadiario and Indian Express