Ideological contortions

When a few weeks ago he announced that he was going to amend the abortion law, Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón asserted that this reform would be the “most progressive” that he would promulgate in his life.

This declaration caused something of a bombshell. The minister was revealing his intention to repeal the Law on Sexual Health and Reproduction, which allows women the free choice to abort within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, and replace it with the previous model that considered interrupting a pregnancy a crime with certain circumstantial exceptions. The current law, which was approved with the broad backing of parliament, introduced in Spain the model for regulating abortion that prevails in the majority of European countries in response to longstanding and persistent demand from progressive circles.

It is understandable that a political leader who has always aimed to place himself on the most moderate wing of the Popular Party, and who has presented himself as an exponent of modernity and cosmopolitanism, should find it difficult to justify the regressive move that such a reform of the law would entail. However, on Wednesday he unfurled a novel display of ideological contortionism to rationalize the reform as a means of averting what he described as “systemic gender violence” that obliges many women to abort.

Asked in Congress if the administration planned to curtail the sexual and reproductive rights of women, the minister replied (in a way that was far from improvised) that the lawmaker in question should not be indifferent to the situation of many women who have seen the supreme embodiment of their reproductive rights — that is the right to be a mother — violated by the pressure brought to bear upon them by certain elements in their environment.

Popular Party sophistry Gallardón’s response is a prime example of a strategy to which the PP often seeks recourse: that of taking the ideological arguments of their opponents and twisting them in such a way that they can be used to appear the opposite of what in fact was intended. If what the minister is concerned about is protecting women who want to carry on with their pregnancy from coercion in their midst a change of the law is not necessary. The current legislation provides protection equally to women who want to abort as those who want to see their pregnancy through. The fact that there may, in very exceptional circumstances, be cases of women who take a decision in one way or the other under duress does not justify changing the law.

The current legislation allows for such circumstances to be identified, and the minister can always increase the services at the disposal of women who want to be mothers by providing them with the means to do so. But what he cannot do is try to hoodwink people by claiming that the way to protect the rights of women who wish to continue their pregnancy is to deprive all women who wish to abort the freedom to decide for themselves without the need to give any reason, and without having to accept that others must vouch for their right to do so. That indeed is systemic gender violence.