by Lorenzo Rossi
«No doctor will be reported to perform abortion or not, not in the Community of Madrid. Does that seem small to you?”. The governor of the Partido Popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso knows no half measures. He says what he thinks, and he says it clearly. No calculations, no politically correct language. The Madrid governor openly challenged Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the left-wing government and even her own party. The fuse was lit in the Assembly, after a question from the spokesperson of Más Madrid, Manuela Bergerot, who asked the president to illustrate the measures to guarantee access to voluntary termination of pregnancy. Ayuso responded in his own way: blow for blow, firm tone, straight gaze. «Whenever the left has problems – he said – it returns to the topic of abortion. It’s his rabbit in the hat. There will be no list of conscientious objectors. Never, ever.”
An open challenge, because the law approved in 2023 obliges the regions to create a register of doctors who perform or refuse to perform abortions. The objective, according to the Government, would be to reorganize public hospitals and guarantee the service. In reality these are real proscription lists. Ayuso has the merit of telling things as they are: it would be a way of filing and stigmatizing professionals who defend their conscience. And so he decided to say no. Not only that: he recalled that in Spain, every year, 106 thousand women have an abortion. “Since you’ve been in government, a million,” he thundered. Then the sentence that made the rounds on social media: «It seems to me a failure as a company. It is in our hands to avoid it.” A provocation? Perhaps. But behind it there is an underlying message: the defense of life and personal freedom. In his speech, Ayuso brought up the Constitution, human rights and even the Koran, responding to the accusations of those who consider it retrograde. “In your book… ask Hamás or the Muslim world what they think about abortion, homosexuality and transsexuality,” he told the left, which feeds – he added – “on civil war, narco-states and abortion”.
A political storm, inevitable. Pedro Sánchez responded by promising that his executive will use “all legal instruments” to enforce the law and “guarantee the dignity of women”. “Back to clandestine trips to London,” he wrote in a venomous tweet, “to classism and finger-pointing. We won’t allow it.” Not even the Popular Party supported its Madrid leader. Party colleague Alberto Nunez Feijóo, more moderate, was quick to distance himself: “We will guarantee abortion in compliance with the law,” he declared. But the base of the PP, the Catholic and conservative one, rallies around her. It must be said that Isabel Diaz Ayuso is not a militant anti-abortionist. In an interview with an Italian newspaper he declared: «I don’t like abortion. I have always defended pro-life policies but I think that abortion should be legal, safe and infrequent. It is the woman who decides, even when to carry on with the pregnancy.” Adding that he had allocated “four billion euros” to his Madrid community to encourage women to have children earlier. Among the measures: 500 euros per month up to the child’s age of two. Defending the right to have a family is not an archaic idea.”
The Madrid governor, although not entirely against abortion, is the image of a different Spain, which does not accept to conform to dominant thought, which does not believe that freedom necessarily comes from the right to terminate a life. Under the Sánchez government, the number of abortions has grown exponentially and is considered to be a contraceptive practice. One million interruptions in just a few years: a European record. In an aging and depopulating country, it sounds like a tragic paradox. While the birth rate collapses, the State encourages the suppression of those who have not yet been born.
