The new abortion law will allow young women over the age of 16 to interrupt their pregnancy without parental permission

Young people from the age of 16 will be able to abort without their parents' permission, according to the draft handled by the Government and that the Ministry of Equality confirms that next Tuesday it will go to the Council of Ministers.

That document, which has been advanced by Cadena SER, confirms some of the progress that the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, already outlined at the end of February.

Among them —and it is one of the ones that will entail the most changes for women's day-to-day—, guaranteeing that this right can be exercised in the public system.

"Voluntarily interrupting pregnancy is going to be guaranteed in all public hospitals," Montero said at the time.

And so it is included in the draft.

That access, in public hospitals, has been interrupted for the last 30 years due to issues such as conscientious objection by professionals.

And the new rule will affect that issue, as the minister also explained three months ago.

"It is essential that all centers with gynecology and obstetrics services have professionals who guarantee the voluntary interruption of pregnancy", "respecting" also "scrupulously" the right to conscientious objection, she alluded then.

To reconcile both, he explained, "the text is referenced in a regulation already in force on the right to conscientious objection: the Euthanasia Law."

In other words, according to this recent regulation, a registry "that allows the identification of needs in each health area, so that the right can be guaranteed in all cases."

According to information from Cadena SER, that is exactly what the document establishes.

The deadlines are also maintained: abortion is free until the 14th week of pregnancy.

From there and until week 21, what is known as a therapeutic abortion can be performed, that is, an interruption for medical reasons such as malformation of the fetus or danger to the life of the mother.

sick leave due to painful periods

Other issues that were not known in as much detail as the previous ones and that the document also includes are those related to menstrual health: three-day sick leave for painful menses, the obligation of educational centers to guarantee the necessary products for menstruation, free access to these products for women at risk of exclusion and also those who are in prison, the elimination of VAT for specific items of feminine hygiene and the provision of sick leave for the interruption of pregnancy.

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Hormonal contraceptives and the morning-after pill will be publicly financed, according to the text, and there will be free distribution of these contraceptive methods in institutes within the framework of sex education campaigns.

The draft of the new norm also touches on wombs for rent, which considers them one of the forms of violence against women: it includes the prohibition of advertising by agencies, with sanctions, and goes further.

The bill, according to the SER, says that the Spanish courts will be able to prosecute couples who go abroad to find a woman to rent her womb, an illegal practice in Spain.

The resource of the PP in the Constitutional

If the rule is approved as it is written in the draft, it would be configured as a new law and not as a reform of the previous one, since it introduces a provision that repeals the previous regulation.

What would this entail for the appeal that the Popular Party filed with the Constitutional Court 12 years ago for the 2010 Abortion Law?

The possibility that this legal initiative could disable that resource is quite remote.

First, because the current Constitutional Court has promised to resolve in the coming months an appeal that has been pending for 12 years and the bill that the Government is preparing has not even begun to be processed in the Congress of Deputies.

If the Constitutional ruling rejects the appeal of the PP and endorses the 2010 term law, the new legislative initiative of the Government will have a free path in Congress.

But if the ruling considers the 2010 law to be unconstitutional on the grounds that the right to life of the unborn is not protected (argument used by the appellants of the PP) then the new norm cannot be processed either, which maintains the free interruption of pregnancy in the first 14 weeks.

On the other hand, in the event that the Constitutional Court leaves the appeal unresolved (knowing that a new law is on the way), it will have to get wet when the new text is approved, because the one who will appeal the initiative again will be Vox.

In that case, the court will count for its verdict with a majority of seven progressive magistrates against five conservatives.