We continue today with the interview that Babies and more is doing to the biologist Irene García Perulero, prominent disseminator on sexual and reproductive health issues and issues around violence against women. We are analyzing with her the implications of the new Abortion law.
If the one conceived of rape or the pregnancy that causes psychological damage to women are accepted as valid causes of abortion, then do these embryos have less right than others to live?
In my particular opinion there is no moral motive or biological assumption that children conceived after rape have less right to live than others. In the case of psychological damage to the mother, she would have to define well what the psychological damage is. What would you think of a “social exclusion risk” assumption?
The case of abortion, as I said before, is a very complicated case of conflict of interest, so to make a fair law, coherence is required and the debate must be honest.
How honest?
I explain. If you consider the unborn baby as a full-fledged human being then abortion has to be prohibited and not only that, but something that raises many more blisters and is that women who abort will be committing murder and should be punished for it, something quite hard to assimilate, but that happens in other countries. Although mitigating apply. And I go further, because in these matters you always forget that to make a baby you need two. What do we do then with men whose partners abort? Also, given the case that abortion was banned, what is done with the 100,000 children who would be born annually without their parents wanting to take care of them? Are there enough couples in our country to adopt so many children? Can the State manage something like that? What would be the result?
What would be the least bad solution to this conflict of interest?
To conclude that in this terrible conflict of interest the least "bad" is a law of deadlines it is not necessary to think that the unborn is not a human being, it is only necessary to think that the woman who decides to abort has properly assessed all options and is a human being with full rights and full capabilities (also affective) and therefore will take the best possible option given their circumstances. Trust. And above all give women the necessary tools to be able to decide freely.
Is abortion a right?
I do not know if abortion is a right, it is not an obvious moral right for me in my current circumstances, what I do know is that it is a fact. It has occurred and will occur whenever there are unwanted pregnancies. It is therefore a matter of health and that is what the State has to regulate, that if a woman has to abort she does so with the minimum risk and maximum guarantee.
One of the criticisms is that this law prevents women from making decisions for themselves and moves them to others who, in a way, will guard it and will be the ones who take them for it. Do you see it that way?
It is a law that does not prevent women from making decisions for themselves that makes them difficult. Subtract freedom and therefore it is violent.
Is abortion due to malformations a form of eugenics?
No. Eugenics is a systematic planning that prevents a group of individuals from reproducing for reasons decided by another group of individuals, usually with greater power. I think that abortions due to malformations are generally acts of love, to the unborn child, to the rest of the children, to the couple and to the whole environment and yes, also to the same, there is nothing wrong with that.
I don't see any difference between a woman who decides not to have a son who will suffer and a woman who decides to have him, I think they both act moved by love.
What legislation would exist in the European Union that would be adopted for our country?
Curiously, the countries that have the most “permissive” abortion laws are also those that tend to be better off in all studies on women's rights and especially mothers. The Nordic countries and the Netherlands in particular, which have effective maternity protection policies and not so difficult to copy, for example with maternal and also long paternal leave accompanied by the promotion of the return of mothers to the labor market, are those that they also have laws on voluntary termination of pregnancy less restrictive. As a result in these countries, greater guarantees are obtained regarding childbirth, fewer caesarean sections and unnecessary interventions, better breastfeeding rates, much lower rates of labor inequality for women and interestingly lower abortion rates. Dutch law, which allows free abortion until week 22 is the least restrictive. For me personally, week 22 may be too much, but it is mostly for emotional reasons. The previous Spanish legislation was, in my opinion, sufficient in regard to the issue of abortion regulation, although its effectiveness in issues such as sexual and emotional education could be greatly improved.
Is it consistent that we abandon a term law with the rest of the system that ensures the protection of women from violence and the imposition of others' wishes on it?
The kindest comment that can be made of the law that will come into effect now is precisely that it is incoherent.
It is not only incoherent in itself - mainly because of the issue we mentioned before the violations - but with respect to the current socio-economic situation, although it is quite consistent with the ideological bias that all policies related to the woman of the last years. A fact that not many people know is that two or three years ago in the Community of Madrid it was decided to close the family planning centers during the weekends. This coupled with the fact that emergency contraception, which on the other hand has been the subject of fierce, fictitious debates about his abortive capacity - at least the one that is most effective and in the longer term - cannot be obtained without a prescription leaves many women, mainly young for obvious reasons, without much reaction capacity if they have a risky sexual relationship. With sexual and emotional education outside of schools, the labor reform that, according to all experts, harms women, limbo dependency law, single women and lesbians outside assisted reproduction treatments, birth rates plummeting mainly due to economic and labor conciliation issues, 25% of children already living on the threshold of poverty and all the inequality with which we still loaded despite the measures that had been taken, the trend is quite clear and the result of the law will be greater violence against women and their children, also those already born.
This makes the minister's speech about the structural violence that exists about women and especially about mothers seem to be incoherent.
What real measures would help women decide freely about their motherhood and also protect the embryo would be necessary?
I do not believe that I will see a world in which unwanted pregnancies do not occur, not only because accidents will always exist, but because today it seems utopian.
We live in a hierarchical system, one of whose pillars is intervention in all aspects of sexuality, not only feminine. A good sexual education but also emotional, forget about topics such as half oranges or that the man needs to spread his seed out there, teach girls and also boys that sex is fun but that entails a responsibility, involve the Men in sexual health care, give easy access to contraceptive methods and above all educate in responsibility towards others and towards oneself to begin with. We are at a time when gender violence increases scandalously among younger women. Raising awareness, naming things like neglect or sexual abuse ... Equal education. And of course measures of real protection of mothers: decent maternal leave, paternal leave that would allow co-responsibility, effective measures of work conciliation ... That or a scientific advance that allows the embryos to be extracted without damaging them, although with this I can think of a lot of dystopia too
