What do we women do who don't have one child after another? What were we thinking, not wanting to serve the species by engendering new human beings without stopping?
The PP seems to be reviving the old ghost of Ruiz Gallardón, the minister who dug his own political grave thirteen years ago with his attempt to end the abortion law. Back then, the feminist movement stopped him in his tracks forcefully. We thought the Spanish right would not again defend ideological positions that seek to undermine women's sovereignty over their own bodies. Socially, everything points to it being a resolved issue, as is that of same-sex marriage, but in Feijóo's race not to lose ground to Vox, they have decided to put a conquest that is more than consolidated back at the center of the debate. Among other things, because what is at stake is to shackle female citizens, to subject and dominate them in an area where, for biological reasons, we have much more at stake than men: that of sexual freedom, which is only freedom for all if it is detached from reproduction. I highly doubt that the majority of women who vote for the right are willing to return to a traditional model, that of the prison of gender (which is the set of stereotypes, the framework of rules we must obey and not an identity freely chosen as some non-feminist voices defend). Among other things, because in the PP there are many ladies who are there because the equality movement has achieved that they can be there, because they themselves are no longer dedicated solely and exclusively to having children or to "sus labores". But since men must rule in the party, it seems that they also adopt this position that goes against them, out of party interest, even though they may later live with the negative consequences. Or perhaps they think that a cut in reproductive rights will not affect them or their daughters. Or is it all pure posturing and double standards, and while Mrs. Ayuso is screaming in the Madrid Assembly talking about the rights of zygotes and the women's section of the Popular Party repeats her slogans, they don't remember the abortions they themselves must have had. Or the morning-after pills, which would be prohibited de facto if from the very moment of intercourse a fertilized egg is already a legal person with full rights. Or has a condom never broken for them, or has the pill never failed, or have they never had one of those urges that lead to an unwanted pregnancy? Nor, of course, have they practiced the Ogino method, which has so many children in this world. It must be that the Popular Party women are chaste and only do it through the hole in the sheet when they want to conceive children.
In this case, the severity of the conservative reaction (regarding rights, in the economic sphere we already know they are ultraliberal) is aggravated by the lack of feminist awareness and solidarity with the situations other women experience. The apparatus to which they belong bends them and subjects them to a regime of discrimination because they are women, as demonstrated by the example of the public and exemplary humiliation of María Guardiola in Extremadura. But even worse is the example of Ayuso, who suffered a miscarriage and knows very well the pain that an interruption of pregnancy causes, whether it is wanted or not. If she had a minimum of empathy, she could put herself in the shoes of those who are forced to undergo the procedure and understand that none of them frivolously or capriciously choose to go through such a painful ordeal. Now the most difficult thing will be to convince a youth that is seduced by conservative values that have never suffered as a system established by law, to defend progress that they will miss if they lose it.
