Vox tries to bite the PP in the weak point of abortion

Alberto Núñez Feijóo began Tuesday by fleeing from the journalists' microphones at an informative breakfast in Madrid that his successor at the head of the Xunta de Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, led.

He was haunted by a question that he did not want to answer: "Is abortion a right?"

His campaign spokesperson, Borja Sémper, had surprised the day before by stating that he is not, which qualified the party's position after Feijóo had accepted the law of deadlines after the Constitutional Court ruling that endorsed the rule.

"Why aren't we calm?

We have the president of Galicia here, ”the PP leader slipped away, before calling a“ press conference ”on Wednesday in which he would respond on the matter.

Feijóo tried to buy time to outline a response to the morrocotudo mess that has been made with the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, with the bishops and the toughest sectors of the right attacking the PP.

In that troubled river for the popular, Vox has also entered to fish.

Santiago Abascal's party has brought its anti-abortion plan to Congress to put pressure on Feijóo, who continues to recoil from the hawks.

Vox wants to take advantage of the flank that has opened up in the PP with Feijóo's turn on abortion to attract the most fundamentalist and ultra-conservative sectors, which nourish the electorate of both parties.

His parliamentary group presented a non-legal proposal by surprise on Tuesday in which he urges the repeal of the 2010 law on voluntary interruption of pregnancy, which the Constitutional Court has just endorsed and Feijóo has assumed.

The initiative is purely testimonial, not only because it will certainly be rejected but also because it does not have regulatory force, but it will force the Popular Group to take a stand on a delicate matter for many of its members as a new electoral cycle approaches.

One of the proponents of the Vox initiative is Lourdes Méndez Monasterio, who as a PP deputy at the time,

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in an act in Madrid this Tuesday.

Alejandro Martinez Velez (Europa Press)

In addition to requesting the repeal of the 2010 law, which only has a few days left in force, Vox's proposal calls for extending to all the autonomous communities the measures that it agreed with the PP in Castilla y León and those that President Alfonso Fernández Mañueco then backed down, given the scandal he raised: psychological assistance, the possibility of listening to the fetal heartbeat and 4D ultrasounds.

Confusingly, the text says that these services will be an "offer, for pregnant women who request it."

It is not clear if the offer is prior to the request.

In addition, it intends to "guarantee the fundamental right to conscientious objection of all professionals who are in any way related to the practice of abortion, without conditioning said exercise to prior registration in a registry."

This clause implies extending the right to conscientious objection to any health personnel (doctors, anesthetists, nurses, orderlies, etc.) and allowing its exercise without prior notice;

which means subjecting the performance of these interventions to uncertainty.

What Vox wants is the illegalization of abortion and euthanasia (“the protection of life from conception to its natural extinction”) but, as long as it does not have a majority to do so, it tries to hinder their exercise, as prominent members have recognized. of the party

Asked if Vox would classify abortion as a crime again, its spokesman in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, responded on Tuesday: "There has never been talk of the barbarity of putting women in jail."

However, his political vice president, Jorge Buxadé, has described abortion as the "planned homicide of a human being in the womb";

that is, a crime.

In reality, the Vox initiative does not intend that the measures it proposes are put into practice.

If that were the case, he would have presented them as amendments to the reform of the law on voluntary interruption of pregnancy, which has been debated in Parliament since last September and this Thursday will pass its last stage in Congress before being published in the BOE.

But neither in the lower nor in the upper House has Vox proposed these measures to reinforce the "informed consent" of women: it has limited itself to formulating veto proposals that, despite their length, did not speak of listening to the heartbeat of the event or see it in 4D.

The Vox spokesman in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, at a press conference after the meeting of the Board of Spokespersons this Tuesday in the Lower House.

FERNANDO ALVARADO (EFE)

Vox wants to take advantage of the abortion to put the PP before its contradictions and mark territory just over three months after regional and municipal elections in which part of its electorate could turn its back on it.

Last Sunday, at the rally with which he opened his electoral campaign, in the Murcia bullring, the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, accused Feijóo of throwing himself into the hands of the left for assuming the 2010 abortion law. “The PP is the PSOE ten years late,” Abascal said.

And he added, in a nod to those who equate the zygote with the human being: "There is only Vox left to defend the most defenseless."

Among the latter is Jaime Mayor Oreja, former Minister of the Interior under Aznar and president of One of Us, who on the 8th participated in a conference in Brussels of fifty anti-abortion organizations that oppose the right of women to interrupt voluntary pregnancy appears in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The proposal to include the right to a "safe and legal" abortion in said letter, backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Parliament, seeks to prevent ultra-conservative regimes such as those in Poland and Hungary from banning it in practice.

The PP, in parallel, wakes up every day with new attacks from the most conservative sectors of the right and from the Church.

The last one has been the bishop of Orihuela-Alicante, José Ignacio Munilla, who has shot directly at Feijóo, of whom he has come to say that "there is too much" in the PP, and that nobody with a "right conscience" should vote for the popular if you share the position of the president of the PP.

After the ruling of the Constitutional Court, Feijóo recognized that "a well-constructed law of terms is a correct law in general terms" and that therefore the rule "deserves your respect."

Aware of the opposition of those circles of its electorate, the PP started the week modulating Feijóo's turn, now without considering abortion a right, the new anathema for the popular.

After Borja Sémper on Monday, the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, avoided this Tuesday qualifying abortion as a right in the face of repeated questions that were put to her at a press conference in Congress.

"Abortion is a failure, it is a drama for every woman who has to resort to it," she replied number

of Feijóo.

The parliamentary spokeswoman acknowledged that "many sensitivities" coexist in the PP and avoided responding to whether she personally believed that abortion was a right.

"I will never judge a woman who makes that decision, but I will work so that she does not have to," she replied, after insisting that "there is a law on deadlines in force that is assumed by Spanish society."

In addition to pressure from hard-line sectors, the PP now also faces harassment from Vox, while Feijóo's direct team acknowledges doubts about whether or not to consider abortion as a women's right.

In principle, the leader of the PP will mark his position this Wednesday.

In the midst of a maelstrom, Feijóo ponders how to sew up the seams of a right that has imploded.

The Government affects the discomfort over the management of health in Madrid to wear down the PP

JOSE MARCOS

The Government returned this Tuesday to try to counteract the lack of agreement in the coalition for the reform of the

influencing its defense of public health with the necessary resources, as a counterpoint to the management that Isabel Díaz Ayuso ( PP) is dealing with the health crisis in the Community of Madrid, where doctors have been on strike since November.

“Without the health personnel, no plan would be possible.

They are our most powerful asset, we must take care of those who take care of us," said Carolina Darias, who highlighted the billion euros that the Government has allocated in the 2022 and 2023 Budgets to primary care despite the fact that health is a competition transferred to the autonomous communities.

The Minister of Health appeared in La Moncloa, highlighting the plans that the Executive of Pedro Sánchez has developed in the national health system during his term "after years of neoliberal cuts that have meant a true dismantling of the welfare state and, specifically, of the National system of health".

Faced with criticism from the PP, which maintains that the problem is due to the lack of toilets throughout Spain and not only in Madrid, Darias stressed that the positions for internal resident physicians (MIR) have grown by 40% "since the arrival of Pedro Sánchez” to the presidency of the Government in June 2018. He also highlighted the 15% increase in places in public medical schools “given the increase in private universities”.

The person in charge of Health affirmed that the Government will be "very attentive and vigilant" in the face of the possibility that Andalusia refers primary care consultations to private companies.

The Executive of Juan Manuel Moreno (PP) contemplated, according to a draft, the possibility of arranging this service and that private entities could use public facilities.

"If they occur, we will act forcefully," warned Darias.

"The Board has never diverted patients either in this legislature or in the previous one and has no intention of doing so," rejected the Andalusian government spokesman, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco.

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