The Minister of Equality, Irene Montero.
Physicians who do not declare themselves as abortion objectors They will not be forced to practice only the voluntary termination of pregnancy during their working hours. The groups that make up the Government have agreed to incorporate a amendment to the draft of the Law on Sexual and Reproductive Health to guarantee that there is no “discrimination” towards doctors that lend themselves to facilitating this right to women in the National Health System (SNS).
The new appendix to the regulatory text obliges the health services to adopt the “necessary organizational measures” to prevent healthcare professionals who are not part of the new register of conscientious objectors of abortion “see relegated exclusively to the practice of voluntary termination of pregnancy”. While it also shields the doctors who have refused to do it against any “discrimination” as a consequence of this decision.
The updated law has been incorporated into the Presentation report that the deputies have already sent to the Equality Commission, one of the previous steps for the law to be debated definitively among the deputies. The Government has paved the way for its approval, after having added more than twenty amendments to the legislative proposal Republican Left (ERC), together, the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), eh Bildu o Canarian Coalition.
This new step occurs after the Congress of Deputies had already rejected with a large majority the amendments to the entire presented by the Popular Party and Vox to try to return the law. The result of 199 votes in favour, 142 against and 4 abstentions anticipates a potential definitive result when the law finally arrives at the level of the Lower House.
I veto objectors in pregnancy committees
Another of the keys to the Presentation Report is that a new article has finally been incorporated into the text to address the composition of the clinical pregnancy committees that evaluate situations such as malformations. The groups have agreed to veto from these multidisciplinary teams those physicians who have joined the register of objectors or who have been a part in the last three years. It was an initiative that United We Canpromoter of the standard, which he anticipated would foreseeably be attached to the final text.
The committees will be made up of two medical specialists in Gynecology and Obstetrics or experts in prenatal diagnosis, as well as one of Pediatrics. The woman will be able to choose which doctor attends her personally. While after the diagnosis is issued, she will have the freedom to decide on the intervention.
The new law will force the autonomous communities to have at least a clinical committee in a center of the public health network. Its members will renew every year and the designation must be reflected in the official gazettes of each territory. “The specificities of the operation of the Clinical Committee will be determined by regulation,” reads the text.
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