• Government Irene Montero assures that regulating honest objection to abortion against health norms
• health Irene Montero is committed to ensuring that abortion rights are exercised in a “safe, public and free” manner in all autonomous communities.

Abortion law reform promoted by Irene Monteiro is in its final stages and could arrive here next Tuesday council of ministers With some draft changes. One of the most pertinent would be that girls as young as 16 years old can voluntarily abort a pregnancy without a parent’s permission. In this way, the main change implemented by Mariano Rajoy in 2015 would be repealed, approved in 2010 by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

The Equality Minister has already moved in on 23 February Congress His desire to eliminate the need for parental permission for abortion of girls aged 16 and 17. “Just as they are responsible for working out or having sex, they are responsible for making decisions about their bodies,” he argued.

Monteiro spoke that day about the “honor” and “preservation” that PSOE approved in 2010 and to suppress amendments about age made by PP. She said in the interview, “We cannot accept that young women who find it very difficult to tell their parents that they are pregnant and want to terminate their pregnancy are left out, especially those who want to terminate their pregnancy. Victims of sexual violence in the family environment.” equality commission,

This change in age to independently and autonomously interrupt pregnancy is one of the points that are part of an alliance agreement between PSOE and United We Can.

source of ministry of equality Recognize that the draft abortion reform is very advanced and believe it can be passed in the first round by the Council of Ministers on 17 May, however, they also stress that talks are still ongoing with the ministries involved. And there are “fringes” to close the “important” cases. However, these sources refuse to divulge what are the issues which are still open.

Apart from age, where there is consensus within the government, access to abortion in public centers has to be “shielded”. It is one of Reform’s most outstanding innovations, which it claims guarantees interruption of pregnancy in “all public hospitals”.

For this, as the Minister of Equality has been explaining, the aim is to ensure by law that all of these publicly owned centers have professionals in gynecology and obstetrics services who can perform abortions and that will no longer be the case, as is the case now. Hospitals where it is not possible for women to exercise this right for honest objections and they are forced to travel hundreds of kilometres.

The new law seeks to make access to voluntary interruption of pregnancy “consistent” with the right of conscientious objection by medical personnel, following the regulation in this regard present in the euthanasia law. That way, there would be a registry of objectors to find out where there would be gaps with more personnel willing to provide this type of intervention that would require reinforcement.

As Cadena Ser has put forward, the Equality Ministry’s draft would include, among other measures, the right to menstrual health, which would allow casualties due to painful rules up to three days. However, the Ministry of Equality does not confirm that the issue has been closed, and it may be one of the main issues that is still being negotiated with other ministries.

Similarly, it has not been confirmed that there will be a reduction or abolition of VAT for feminine hygiene products or free items for women at risk of social exclusion, as envisaged in the Equality Ministry’s draft.