At the exit of the Tetuan metro stop, going up Hermano Gárate street, there is a graffiti on the ground: "Here they kill children". The last steps to enter the Dator clinic, one of the seven that make voluntary interruptions of pregnancy in the Community of Madrid, are not easy for women who come to the center. On the nearby walls, more messages. And then, the reception in person.
"Are you going to kill your son?" This is how Mercedes, a rosary in hand, receives a woman who is going to enter the clinic. He grabs her arm and gives him a booklet. Before releasing it, he whispers in his ear one last message: "Murderer." Mercedes is a volunteer at one of the foundations dedicated to harassing women at the door of the clinic.
One of the center's workers, Sonia Lamas, also spokesperson for the Association of Accredited Clinics for Pregnancy Interruption (ACAI). Express your frustration. "We have reported months ago the harassment we suffered, but the authorities do not even come to clean the graffiti," he says. He considers it a direct attack on women and their right to decide about their pregnancy, a faculty that is part of the public health services portfolio. "The women who come here do so derived from public health. The Community of Madrid should ensure what happens to their patients," he defends.
Harassment actions do not end in the street. On the contrary, these lobbyists work on various levels: legal, administrative and public. In the latest ACAI report of 2018, the association interviewed 300 women who had experienced these pressure mechanisms. Some names appeared on a recurring basis: Become Hear, Right to Live, More Future and Sifra Association dedicate a good part of their resources and efforts to put obstacles to the voluntary termination of pregnancy. In the report, 89% of women declared some form of harassment by these groups; 67% of them felt threatened during medical processes. 100% of the women approached maintained their decision and interrupted their pregnancy.
These organizations go in the morning at the doors of the clinics and plant themselves waiting for women. "Our goal is to help people who are going through an unexpected pregnancy and women who in the past had an abortion and are now living the consequences," they explain from Sifra. In this association, where they also give ethical talks about assisted reproduction techniques, they offer women two other alternatives: being a mother or giving the baby up for adoption.
Every woman who goes to the clinic copes with these pressures in her own way. Some, explain the professionals, arrive so altered that their status makes intervention unlikely, which delays all plans and lengthens the agony of making an always difficult and complex decision.
Two years ago Maria (fictitious name) made the decision to terminate her pregnancy. At the entrance of the clinic on the day of the intervention, a group of men approached her to harass her. “I have arrived at the clinic very nervous, because abortion is not an easy thing, but for me the worst has undoubtedly been the harassment. Some men have lectured me, they have shown me photos and they have told me that women die in there, ”he says two years later. "I hope these people realize the evil they do to us here," he laments. 8,000 women have had to suffer in Spain harassment situations since in 2010 the law on deadlines was approved, according to the Pro-Rights platform, which groups 62 organizations from all over Spain.
One of the most common pressure methods is brochures, such as those delivered by Mercedes. In them you can see images of fetuses and phrases such as: "You are alone, and your abortion will be for a lifetime." Also: "Abortion can cause suicide and cancer."
The steps that the anti-abortionists follow are always the same. Once they get the woman's attention after grabbing her arm, they ask if she is pregnant and how long she is. The objective is to convince her to accompany them to one of her offices, where, after showing the pregnant woman the pertinent ultrasounds, they try to persuade her to have the baby, regardless of whether she suffers from malformations incompatible with life, if she puts the health of the baby at risk. woman or under what conditions it was conceived.
A few months ago, a Vox deputy, Gádor Joya, installed a van in which he made ultrasound at the doors of voluntary termination clinics in the capital because, according to the far-right party, “women do not know what they wear inside".
There are other less aggressive, but more effective methods. The most used is to invite the girls to a coffee or a breakfast, since, if the women ingest something, anything, the intervention cannot be carried out. This forces the patient to go through Calvary to return another day.
In Madrid, according to ACAI, this type of harassment is mainly focused on the Dator clinic, where these groups go practically daily, while at the Isadora clinic and at the El Bosque medical center the action is weekly, specifically on Saturdays. The Dator clinic was the first private center with permission to perform pregnancy interruptions in Spain.
The professionals who work in the center are also not saved. Lamas is 47 years old and has been in Dator for five years. Once, one of these stalkers followed her out: "How much do you charge. Do you work here for money? I can help you get another job."
From the ACAI platform, the creation of a specific criminal type has been requested to address these types of situations, as has happened in France since 2017. They have also asked for the creation of a minimum safety distance at the clinic doors, which It would be similar to the distance that every smoker should keep from a school or hospital. But they have been demanding this type of measures for several years now.
In the Community of Madrid, 18,914 women were aborted in 2018, the latest data available, according to the Ministry of Health, representing a decrease of 9.7%. To the anguish, uncertainty and concern generated by making such a decision many added, in addition, having to endure the pressure of those who want to make that decision for them.
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