The Madrid People's Party (PP) wants to force women to be informed about a false "postural trauma."

BarcelonaUnder the pretext of providing more support to women seeking abortions, Madrid City Council will require health and social services professionals to provide information about a supposed "postural trauma" that has no scientific validity and is based on a proposal by Vox, with the support of the PP municipal group. The initiative, which was also endorsed by the leadership of the Popular Party (PP) on Wednesday, is in line with the agenda of the most ultra-conservative international groups. reduce women's sexual and reproductive rights, such as, for example, the failed attempt to Castile and León to make women hear the fetal heartbeat before undergoing an abortion.

At a press conference to present the data on abortion in 2024, Health Minister Mónica García warned the PP that if they implement the initiative, "the ministry will judicially review the legality of the action and the legal consequences that this harassment may have." The minister criticized the Popular Party and Vox for trying to link "abortion to a future of fear" and insisted on the lack of scientific evidence for the supposed syndrome: "The only syndrome that exists now is the far-right shift of the PP, with its hatred, its attacks on women, and its denialism."

The PP, led by Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida, approved the proposal promoted by Vox councilors in the municipal plenary session on Tuesday. The proposal was voted against by the opposition, representing the PSOE and Más Madrid, who consider the proposal a setback for women's freedom. According to José Fernández, the Madrid City Council's Social Affairs delegate, the information that health and social care professionals will provide women before undergoing an abortion will be "verbal and written," but the message will also be reinforced with posters placed "permanently and visibly" throughout municipal centers.

For Gemma Candela, a member of the Madrid Commission for the Right to Abortion, measures must be taken to ensure that the initiative is not implemented due to a lack of "scientific and legal basis," since neither the World Health Organization (WHO), nor scientific societies, nor the most widely consulted treatises on mental disorders, have approved it. The activist denounces the proposal as a form of "institutional violence" that seeks to "put an end to women's right and autonomy to decide" by spreading "fears and lies" and generating guilt among women. "This measure is nothing more than a control mechanism that is being implemented and is nullifying all decision-making capacity," she states.

Bureaucratic gymkhana

Madrid feminists have been denouncing for years that the decades of conservative PP governments They have curtailed women's right to abortion. On the one hand, the number of abortions performed in public hospitals is almost anecdotal (less than 1%), partly due to the procedures designed by the Community of Madrid itself to make it difficult to access this right, which was approved by law precisely 40 years ago. It is this "bureaucratic gymkhana" that makes women afraid that the days will pass and they will not be able to "have an abortion within the stipulated period of the 14 weeks", which allows free interruption without any justification.

Pro-rights activists point out that the PP and Vox's initiative is an "ideological" motivation that aims to intimidate women who freely exercise their right to voluntary abortion. In this sense, they point out that the initiative may go against current legislation, which criminally punishes women. people and actions that hinder access to the benefit.

The clefts Opposition to authorized abortion clinics or mandatory fetal heartbeat monitoring are strategies used by fundamentalist organizations. Experts also argue that they are completely ineffective, because women who have decided to have an abortion have thought it through carefully, and prohibiting them or putting them on the backs of their wheels while undergoing the procedure can be more harmful than actually having an abortion.