The law of the unborn conceived, promoted by Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the Community of Madrid and assumed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo as a promise if he reaches Moncloa, is ambiguous because it is presented as a policy to promote birth rates and support families, but it turns the aid into the gateway to an ideological framework that could put reproductive rights at risk.Allowing pregnant women to receive benefits from the 14th week of pregnancy may seem, at first glance, like a simple administrative modification. And it is true that, legally, this law does not modify the state norm that regulates rights related to sexual and reproductive health, including the right to abortion. But its scope is not exhausted in the letter of the law. Behind it is the will to introduce, step by step, the postulates of the anti-abortion agenda of the extreme right.The great legal transformations do not usually suppress rights from one day to the next. They usually modify the conceptual framework from which these rights are interpreted. Ayuso's initiative is inspired by the American movement of the "fetal personhood, which has gained significant traction in recent years in the United States. Its goal is to create a "fetal personhood" that shields the rights of the unborn above all others, thus coming into conflict with reproductive rights, including access to abortion, contraception, and even fertilization in vitro.To understand what this concept implies, it is interesting to follow the chronology of this biological process. Embryonic development begins with the fertilization of the ovum by the sperm when they unite to form a zygote; after a few days, the blastocyst implanted in the mother's uterus gives rise to the embryo and, around the ninth week, the embryo becomes a fetus. Science can describe this path, but it cannot point out the exact moment when a developing human life becomes a "person". This answer is not scientific, but moral, philosophical or religious. And now it also wants to be political, to end up ideologically governing public policies on the beginning of life.Prenatal life deserves moral consideration. But one thing is to recognize moral value in prenatal life and quite another to make it a subject of rights comparable to a born person. The Madrid law for now does not restrict any of the woman's rights and can be read solely as an aid to motherhood. But it is not neutral, because it shifts the debate towards the status that the unborn should have. And this movement is slippery. First it is said that the conceived counts so that the parents receive aid. Then, that if it counts to obtain it, perhaps it should also count for other purposes. And finally, that if it has rights in some areas, it is not understood why it should not have them in all. The underlying problem is that some postulates that the extreme right engenders and to which it gives life can end up weakening, to the point of making them die, recognized democratic rights.
