The Government of Castile-La Mancha, through the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Health, made public last Monday, September 9 the draft decree that will create a register of health workers who conscientiously object to abortion.
The purpose of the said decree, as stated in the draft, is to “create and regulate the register of health professionals who are conscientious objectors directly involved in the practice of voluntary termination of pregnancy” and “establish the procedure for their declaration of conscientious objection”.
The document also recalls that the establishment of this register of opponents of abortion is consequence of the reform of the abortion law approved by the Congress of Deputies in February 2023, which demanded it.
Even though a year and a half has passed since then, only five autonomous communities (La Rioja, Murcia, Cantabria, Catalonia and the Canary Islands) have activated this census. Something that Castilla-La Mancha will also do soon.
The Ministry of Equality, which promoted the reform of the abortion law under Irene Montero, has requested this modification ensure that women who need it can terminate their pregnancies in public hospitalsforcing them all to offer both pharmacological and surgical abortion.
in private
Today, 85% of abortions performed in Spain are carried out in private clinics, often hundreds of kilometres from the patients’ homes. A situation that, to a large extent, is produced by the very high rate of objecting doctors which is registered in regional public health systems.
In Castile-La Mancha, without going any further, 100% of gynecology and obstetrics departments in public hospitals refuse to perform voluntary terminations unless there is a risk to the health of the mother or the fetus, as the regional government itself has repeatedly assured.
According to the latest available data published by the Ministry of Health, referring to the year 2022, in Castilla-La Mancha the number of abortions was 3,294Only two of them were carried out in public centres, 891 in private centres and the rest outside the hospital.
And women who voluntarily decide to undergo this intervention when there is no risk to them or to the fetus They can only do it for free in two private clinics that are organizing a concert with the Health Service of Castile-La Mancha (SESCAM), one in Albacete, the capital, and the other in Miguelturra (Ciudad Real).
Several goals are pursued with the registration of opponents. One of them is that each health professional individually expresses his or her conscientious objectionpreventing full services from making the decision. “Conscientious objection is an individual right, with a personal, non-transferable and concrete character. It cannot therefore be exercised by an institution, a centre, a service or a unit”, specifies the draft decree drawn up by the Government of Castile-La Mancha.
and another is prevent so-called opponents of public health from performing abortions in privatethus generating economic benefits. An “inconsistency” that, according to the then Minister of Equality, Blanca Fernández, said in May 2023: “Fortunately” this had not happened until now in Castile-La Mancha.
The preliminary draft of the project ensures that the list of protest toilets that will be launched in the coming weeks in Castilla-La Mancha “will be subject to the principle of strict confidentiality and the regulation on the protection of personal data”, also leaving a “trace of access”, even if the Vox parliamentary group in the regional courts has denounced that secrecy has not been guaranteed since The managers of the centres where voluntary terminations of pregnancy are carried out – both public and private – will have this information..
How does registration work?
1. The declaration of conscientious objection will be submitted individually.
2. It will be submitted before the scheduled date for the execution of the voluntary termination of pregnancy benefit, sending it electronically through the form included in the electronic headquarters of the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha.
3. The declaration of conscientious objection will be automatically registered in the register and the professional will receive an acknowledgement of receipt of their registration in the register with the date of the request.
4. The declaration of conscientious objection will be effective indefinitely and may be modified or revoked at any time.
5. The deletion may be carried out by the interested party or by the responsible general management in the event of death, retirement or permanent disability of the registered person, once one of these situations has been communicated by the management of the center where the person provides their services. . registered.
According to the deputy and spokesperson for Vox in the regional parliament, Iván Sánchez, “this record is nothing more than a a control tool of the socialist government of Emiliano García-Page to prosecute doctors who refuse to perform abortions” and “represents a violation of the fundamental right to conscientious objection”, which, he assured, does not need to be regulated or controlled by the Administration.
Iván Sánchez, spokesman for the Vox parliamentary group in the Cortes of Castilla-La Mancha.
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“We are faced with a new attempt to establish a control system typical of totalitarian regimes“, warned the Vox parliamentarian, who insisted that “we cannot allow that instead of defending doctors, the Council forces them to publicly declare their position on an issue as personal and delicate as this one.”
When the Congress of Deputies approved in February 2023 the modification of the abortion law that obliges communities to create a register of opponents, the government of Castilla-La Mancha declared that I would respect the decision of each health professional. and this, in turn, would try to offer women the possibility of abortion in public hospitals. To this end, it has even tried to recruit doctors who perform abortions in the private sector, but without success so far.
