Congress approves punishing harassment of women who want to abort with votes against PP and Vox

The Congressional Justice Commission has approved this Wednesday the report of presentation on the proposal of Organic Law for modify the Penal Code, for criminalize harassment of women who go to abortion clinics. All groups have voted in favor, except for PP and Vox.

The report of the presentation incorporates two changes introduced as a result of a transaction between the PSOE, Unidas Podemos, ERC, PNV and Cs so that the harassment carried out against the workers and professionals of the clinics themselves is also subject to punishment, and so that the complaint is not necessary for the persecution of the facts.

With this initiative, all those “annoying, offensive, intimidating or coercive acts” that “undermine the freedom of women” will be punished with the imprisonment from 3 months to 1 year or with work for the benefit of the community from 31 to 80 days, and establishes that the court may also impose the prohibition of going to certain places for a period of 6 months to 3 years.

From the PSOE, Laura Berja He has reproached the PP for “taking the side of Vox and those who harass women.” “It is very sad that you do not evolve,” he reproached them, recalling that 11 years ago they also tried to “boycott” the abortion law. “It is not understood that in a country like ours, the right is so close to the extreme right”, has reproached Berja, who considers “fascism” to call freedom of choice “extermination.” “Abortion is a right recognized in our legal system, as much as it hurts many deputies in this room,” the socialist concluded.

Martina Velarde (United We Can) has defended the proposal, pointing out that, just as abortionists do not go to Church to tell women that they have the right to abort, neither can “those who pray” go to clinics to “harass and coerce women to do not exercise their right to abortion. ” “There is nothing less Christian than those who use prayer to hit women’s freedoms,” he said.

Also the deputy of Cs Sara Gimenez has supported the proposal, since it “recognizes the right of women to freely decide about their bodies in the event of pregnancy” and because, in their opinion, “the system has to offer freedom to exercise and guarantee the right to abortion” . Giménez has regretted that there are groups against the initiative, referring to PP and Vox, and has described as “unsustainable” that women face situations of “harassment” in an “advanced democratic state” like ours.

From ERC, Pilar Vallugera has also defended the text, and has denied that, as PP and Vox say, it serves to limit the rights of opinion or assembly, because in the case of those who harass women at the doors of clinics, what they do is ” impose their beliefs “, so the” objection “acts as a” barrier to a right “such as abortion.

“Centers of extermination of human beings”

The PP and Vox have positioned themselves against it. The most critical have been those of Vox, by naming the clinics where abortion is performed “killing centers of human beings “.” Faced with the business of death, we will not be silent, “he asserted Patricia de las Heras.

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This deputy considers that the initiative debated this Wednesday in the Commission has a “beneficiary”, the clinics themselves, which “profit by causing the death of others.” For De las Heras, those who according to the rest of the formations harass women are actually “rescuers”, “volunteers” who give women “affection”, “humanity” and “truth” and who “demonstrate peacefully” as “did Gandhi”. In addition, it indicates that the text “restricts the right of expression, movement and assembly.”

Also the PP has voted against because the text supposes “another example of the sectarianism of the PSOE and its partners”, because as the popular maintains Maria Teresa Angulo, “limit rights” and “they discriminate against some Spaniards“for” thinking differently “and” offering information to women who go for abortions, “which he has labeled” inconceivable. “” It is a violation of rights due to ideological sectarianism, “he insisted.