Harassment of women who abort will be a crime starting this weekend

Ultra-Catholic groups they pray every day since last March 2, for 12 hours in a row, next to the pregnancy termination clinics from 19 Spanish cities, with rosaries in hand and banners that include direct appeals to women who seek abortions, through phrases such as “What if I had your smile?” or “you are not alone, we can help you”. right in front of the Dator Clinic, In Madrid, one of the largest of those dedicated to this type of intervention, the organization Hazte Oír opened a headquarters on March 9 (“provider refuge & rdquor;, they call it) from which they have organized concerts stray and projected ultrasounds on a giant screen. They also hand out brochures and sometimes try prevent passage those who come to the center.

It always occurs, with more or less virulence, continuously or intermittently. Those responsible for the clinics carry years complaining about “harassment & rdquor; to which the women who decide to interrupt their pregnancy and the workers of the centers are subjected. Radical anti-abortionism had so far benefited from a almost complete impunity, being able to organize their campaigns without fear of the consequences, but the panorama changed this Wednesday.

The Senate, with the only votes against the PP and Vox, definitively approved the penal code reform that punishes harassment in front of these centers with imprisonment from three months to one year or work for the benefit of the community from 31 to 80 days, in the wake of what already exists in countries like Germany and the UK. The rule will be published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) on Thursday or Friday, sources from the upper house explained, and would come into force the following day. East weekend, therefore, the new crime will be applicable.

The approval (by 154 votes in favor and 105 against) left a bittersweet aftertaste in the Association of Accredited Clinics for the Interruption of Pregnancy (ACAI). The entity claims It has been a long time since measures have been taken against this harassment, for which he put figures in a report published in 2018. After interviewing 300 women who had had abortions in clinics throughout Spain, the study concluded that 89% had felt harassed and 66% threatened.

Penal reform can help change the current situation, they pointed out in ACAI, but it is too “indefinite” and it is not clear that the judges are going to apply it to the calls that the radical anti-abortionists carry out from now on. “We do not know what is going to happen & rdquor ;, they said in the association, where they house the hope that the legal change has, at least, a “deterrent effect & rdquor ;. Even so, in ACAI they are in favor of establishing security perimeters around the centers, a measure that is applied in France, c.As a way to combat harassment more easily and quickly. The PNV supported the approach, and registered an amendment to this effect, but the Socialists, promoters of the penal reform, voted against it.

The debate hardly brought anything new, with the positions of the groups already fixed since the processing of the law in Congress. “A series of people, filled with hate and in concert, try to humiliate to these women, threaten them, coerce them and prevent them from freely exercising their rights. It is necessary that we have these behaviors regulated in the Penal Code so that they do not happen again & rdquor ;, said the socialist senator Jose Maria Oleaga.

For the PP, on the other hand, the reform is an “ideological and sectarian measure to satisfy minority sectors of women & rdquor; and shows the fear of the left to “freedom and opinion & rdquor ;, he said Ferdinand de Rosa. Vox went further. His representative Jacobo Gonzalez-Robatto, called “criminals & rdquor; to pregnancy termination clinics, because, he continued without providing any evidence, “they coerce women to abort & rdquor ;. The far-right party has already announced that resort to reform before the Constitutional Court.