I didn't think I had to go back to this trench, really.
I never imagined that I would be forced to repeat the old refrain, that ABC of moral, medical, social, humanitarian reasons and the most elementary civic coherence that lead to defending the legalization of abortion.
I have mentioned them so many, many times over so many years, in writing and out loud, in articles and interviews and public events.
It took us a whole decade, from Franco's death to 1985, to get the first law approved.
And we had to resort to extreme actions, like that letter that, in imitation of a previous French initiative, we published in EL PAÍS 1,300 more or less well-known women blaming ourselves for having voluntarily aborted.
It was in October 1979 and it was in support of 11 women who were going to be tried in Bilbao for having interrupted their pregnancy.
A good scandal was mounted;
those were hard times.
For some of the participants in the letter, like the great Elena Arnedo, a gynecologist, the signing meant reprisals that she faced with exemplary dignity (she was a formidable person).
I mean that it was a real war, a long battle without weapons but with deaths, or, rather, deaths, all those unfortunates who died every year from the brutality of the botched abortions to which they were subjected.
According to data from the Ministry of Justice in 1976, there were 100,000 clandestine abortions in Spain and between 200 and 400 women died each year.
Of course, always the poorest, the most unprotected.
Those with enough autonomy and money traveled abroad to be able to terminate their pregnancy in decent conditions.
For example, according to a report by the United Kingdom Government, in 1977, 10,000 Spanish women had abortions in London.
This is one more of the old ABC reasons to support legalization: that prohibition supposes an appalling social injustice and the condemnation to pain and horror, to infections,
But it is seen that there is no choice but to repeat the basics and name the obvious, because rampant reactionism and dogmatism, supported by the insane drift of the United States, are once again endangering even the most essential rights.
To start at the beginning, nobody is in favor of abortion.
Abortion is a trauma, an attack on the body and sadness.
But it is also a last resort.
We must try to reduce abortions as much as possible, with sexual education and easy access to contraceptives (two things that, by the way, anti-abortionists usually do not like), but it is evident that it is not possible to achieve a society with zero abortion.
There are always errors, lack of information or access to contraceptives, abuse of power, rape, risks to the mother's health.
Every year around 25 million unsafe abortions are performed in the world, and as a result at least 22,000 women die (other sources put the figure at 47,000).
Most young and healthy.
What a carnage.
Ten years ago, the Guttmacher Institute in New York demonstrated with figures, in a ceremony held in our Congress of Deputies, that the most restrictive laws did not reduce the number of abortions (they only made them clandestine), and that the most low were precisely in Europe, in those countries with more permissive laws, which were also the ones that most promoted sex education and the use of contraceptives.
But if not even the Church was clear about abortion until 1869, which was when Pius IX decreed that embryos had a soul from the moment of conception!
Before, and throughout 18 centuries, Catholics discussed a lot about the moment in which the soul reached the fetus.
Saint Augustine said that there was no animation until 46 days, and Saint Thomas considered that the soul entered at 40 days, if it was male, and at 90, if it was female (he already takes subtle precision).
Before that, the embryo was nothing.
It is unfortunate, in short, to have to repeat all this so many years later.
But, although unfortunate, it is necessary.
Friends, see you in the trenches of civility and reason.
Not a single step back, not even to gain momentum.
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