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Abortion is not for men to decide

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support spanish pro-choice demo, train to madridJoin a week of pro-choice solidarity with the women of Spain.

The right of Spanish women to access safe and legal abortion is currently under threat from a proposal to reform the current law in a highly restrictive fashion by Spain’s ruling party, the Partido Popular.

Abortions would only be allowed for victims of rape or where there is a risk to the pregnant woman’s physical or psychological health.

The legislation would make Spain among Europe’s most restrictive countries on abortion.

Protests against the changes and in support of the right of women in Spain to choose have already started.

Over here, UK-based pro-choice campaign group Abortion Rights organised a snap demo outside the Spanish Embassy in London on 11 January.

And on 12 January in people in Edinburgh joined with members of the local, artistic and feminist collectives Spanish Citizen, The Blender Collective, Olé mi koño and La Clínica Mundana (LCM) and marched from the Scottish Parliament to the Spanish Consulate’s offices in Edinburgh.

Carolina Cancanilla, representative of the feminist collective Olé mi koño and of the artistic association The Blender Collective, pointed out that this reform is “completely promoted by ecclesiastical groups, who give preference to religious beliefs, rather than to the Spanish Constitution and the citizens’ rights”.  

Marian Womack, writing on the New Internationalist blog, said Spain’s new abortion law is just one more example of the government’s patriarchal, patronising and hypocritical attitude.

The European Women’s Lobby (EWL), the largest umbrella organisation of women’s associations in the European Union, is organising a week of solidarity with women in Spain, starting on 27 January.

This includes a demonstration in Brussels on 29 January and ‘The Train of Liberty’ to Madrid action on 1 February.

On 1 February, trains will depart from all over Spain carrying pro-choice campaigners to Madrid, where they will hand Spanish MPs a text with the title ‘Because it’s my choice’.

‘Because it’s my choice’ runs ‘Because […] I am free, and I live in a democracy, I demand the continuity of the current Law of Sexual and Reproductive Health and pregnancy termination to promote the moral autonomy, to preserve the freedom of conscience, and to guarantee the plurality and diversity of all women.’

To read an English translation of the full text, click here.

And if you are in – or can only realistically get to – London, not Spain, on 1 February, you can join campaign group My Belly Is Mine for a solidarity train trip from Charing Cross to Waterloo.

The My Belly is Mine campaign has been set up by British feminists to support Spanish women in their fight against the proposed reform to Spain’s current abortion law.

So those of you unable to make your way to Madrid, but who want to demonstrate your support, can join us travelling to Madrid ‘in spirit’ by going on a symbolic journey from Charing Cross Station to Waterloo East in time to be at a meeting – at 1pm – at London’s Hungerford Bridge on 1 February.

For details go to My Belly is Mine’s facebook page – and join us on the train!

The women of Spain need your support.

We really must stop this law from being passed.

The chair of the European Parliament’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee (FEMM), Mikael Gustafsson, denounced the Bill.

According to El Pais, he sent a letter to all European Parliament members expressing “great concern” over the proposed law, and he said later, “It’s a question of human rights; that women can decide about their own body and that it is not men who decide.”

Too right.

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