Women, abortion, migration and political, medical and religious discourses in

Catalonia (Spain)
Mara E. Martnez Morant
Ph.D. Cultural and Social Anthropology
Key words: women; abortion; medical, political and religious discourses

Introduction
When planning this research I proposed to explore the experiences of women who had
to face the decision of having an abortion and go through this operation after having
confirmed they were pregnant. I wished to undertake an approach that would allow me
to understand the impact of abortion on women who go through this experience. I
imagined the influence of medical discourse, legalpolitical discourse, and religious
discourse would be closely linked to it, and later established that this was the case. An
influence on the decision to abort is construed, among other things, as women
experiencing an extremely painful process when they have an abortion; doubting the
legality of abortion in Spain; using methods of abortion that put womens lives at risk;
feelings like a criminal for having had an abortion; not realizing that women have the
right to have an abortion; and to go ahead with an unwanted pregnancy.
Despite being legal in Spain since 1985 1 , abortion is a life event that seems hard to talk
about. It is often approached with dislike, showing that people know there is such a
thing as abortion but do not approve of it, and even if they have had contact with the
practice, they still reject it. Or that it may not concern the family itself, nor the group or
environment in which people live. The level of disapproval of abortion runs parallel to
an apparent tolerance, though most of the women who have abortions do so secretly,
as does the medical personnel who perform them.
Consequently, abortion is a sensitive issue that must be considered in depth, and the
first obstacle to this was the restricted access to the people upon whom I wished to
conduct ethnographical research. To select the interviewees, I had to request the
cooperation of women who came to a social resource for abortion. In the case of this
research, it was an Association 2 that runs an aid program to finance abortions for
women who live in Catalonia. I had the opportunity to provide my services there for
several years and attended to several thousands of women who came to the center to
apply for social and financial assistance. After planning how I would conduct the
research, I requested permission from the Association to begin approaching potential
interviewees.
I invited potential interviewees to participate in the research in the course of the
interviews I conducted as part of my job, which was to attend the vulnerable women
from different origins that approached the Association to ask for social and financial
assistance in order to pay for a legally induced abortion 3 . Therefore, the study group in
1

At the time of my research, the governing law was Spanish Organic Law 9/ 1985, of July 5, 1985,
reforming the Spanish Penal Code with the incorporation of Article 417bis to it (hereinafter referred to as
Organic Law 9/1985). Nevertheless, a new law on abortion was passed in Spain on February 24, 2010.
2
For the purpose of maintaining anonymity, I will always refer to the social resource where I worked
attending to women who came to request social and financial assistance to have an abortion as the
Association.
3
I write legally induced abortion because it fits the provisions of Spanish Organic Law 9/1985, which
specifies three cases in which a woman may have an abortion: 1) deformation of the fetus up to 22 into the
pregnancy; 2) on account of rape, after filing a report with the police and before 12 weeks of pregnancy; 3)
if the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman is at risk, in which case there is no time limit.

this research was women, immigrants, and either Catalan or Spaniards who were living
in precarious situations and came to the Association, where, if necessary, they were
referred to legally authorized private clinics, in the case of Catalonia, 4 where they could
have an abortion.

Women on whom the ethnographical research was conducted

I implemented the process for forming the group of interviewees on whom I was
conducting the research in several stages. It consisted of successive periods of 1 to 2
months. During these periods I invited the potential interviewees to take part in this
research and, while transcribing the interviews, I recommenced the phase of inviting
new potential interviews to participate. I repeated the process six times, from March
2007 up until I finish in February 2008, with which I will completed the group of women
studied.
In all, I conducted the ethnographical research on a group of 112 women, whose tales
will explain some of the different aspects of abortions performed on women whose
names and origins I deliberately omit, and do not even invent, for I percieve the system
of chiaroscuro and ambiguity that surrounds abortion.
Out of a total of 112 interviewees, I conducted 46 interviews with women before they
had their abortion. I interviewed all the women in depth after their abortion, but also
managed to interview 46 of them before they had an abortion, to analyze and contrast
the variability between the before and the after when one has an abortion. On
average, the pre-abortion interviews lasted 2 hours, whereas the post-abortion
interviews were between 3 and 4 hours long each. All of them were recorded digitally.
I must highlight an aspect that had an impact on the scope of the research. Despite the
effort to prevent bias, a specific population was selected for the ethnographical
research, because out of all the women in Spain who have abortions, the Association
only attends to those who live in Catalonia and, of these, only those who had financial
problems and needed help to pay for a legally induced abortion. Consequently, the
data presented in this research correspond to a specific segment of the population. The
data, therefore, may give a perspective that does not completely reflect the real life
situation shared by all of the women who have an abortion. The data published by the
Spanish Department of Health and Consumer Affairs, the data in the Associations
2006 Report, and the number of women in the study group make the issue clear:
Total number of (VTOPs) 5 practiced in Spain in 2006
(Spanish Department of Health and Consumer Affairs, 2007:17)
(Non-financed and financed)

101,592

Total number of VTOPs in Catalonia in 2006

(Spanish Department of Health and Consumer Affairs, 2007:28)
(19.8% of the total recorded in Spain
Non-financed and financed)

20,123

Total number of VTOPs financed in Catalonia 2006

(Association, 2007:6)

4,210

Not only in Catalonia but in the whole of Spain, the clinics are private and are where the majority of the
abortions are performed. In the public health network, both in the autonomous regions and on the national
level, the number of abortions performed is just under 3% of the total.
5
Abortion is also referred to in Spain as Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy, although, as you will see in
the course of this research, this term does not match the features of current legislation.

(20.92% of the total recorded in Catalonia)

Interviewees in the study group
(2.66% of the total number of VTOPs financed in Catalonia)

112

With regard to the general characteristics that enabled a benchmark social profile to be
identified, the study group comprised 112 women of ages 15 to 38. 70% of the women
interviewed were foreigners, whereas the remaining 30% were Spanish and Catalan. 6
Out of the total number, the largest group was of single women, many of whom had
relationships that lasted less than 2 years, in which they cohabitated. The level of
autonomy of nearly all of these women was subject to low-qualified jobs, with poor
salaries, normally within the black economy, or they were unemployed and received no
state benefits or financial assistance.

Foreign or immigrant interviewees

Amongst the flow of immigrants recorded in Catalonia in the last few years, many
young women are arriving who are or will soon be of reproductive age. Due to a
number of different factors, some of them find themselves having to face unwanted
pregnancies and abortions. Many of them are also in more dire straits than the Spanish
and Catalan women because they have no job or, if they have one, the job itself is very
unstable. This circumstance indicates that their financial situation is the main reason for
seeking an abortion, and even for that they need financial support Many immigrant
women come to the Association to request social and financial assistance for this
reason. The number of immigrant women who have approached the Association has
increased over the past few years. Notably, out of the total number of women attended
in 2006, 66% were foreigners and 34% were Spanish and Catalan (Association,
2007:16).
The women came from several different countries, with the largest group being made
up of Latin American women (the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Republic of
Ecuador, and the Republic of Peru); followed by women from the Kingdom of Morocco;
and lastly, from Romania (Association, 2007:16). This trend in geographic distribution
displayed in the Associations Report was naturally preserved in the interviews
conducted.
Thus, the study group was made up of young girls and women from different social
backgrounds and cultures. For instance, and broadly speaking, immigrant women tend
to have more children (compared to the currently recorded number of children born to
Spanish and Catalan women) 7 , and the knowledge of usage of methods of
6

At the time of this research, the Associations 2007 Report had not yet been published. I am therefore
presenting the data gathered from my research which show that the number of immigrant women who
approached the Association was rising. This is the reason for the difference between the data I have taken
from the 2006 Report (66% foreigners and 34% Catalan and Spanish) which you will see further on, and
the data from my research (70% foreign women and 30% Spanish and Catalan women).
7
In the Demographics section of the newspaper El Peridico de Catalunya, of July 4, 2008, there was a
news item that declared Catalonia had regained the fertility rate of 1984 with 1.48 per woman. The article
reported that due to 10 consecutive years of growth, in 2007 the fertility rate (which measures the number
of children per woman of childbearing age) reached its highest level since 1984. This now means that, at
1.48, the average number of children that women in Catalonia have is higher than even the Spanish
national average (1.39), which is a big difference to the low average recorded in 1995 (1.14). According to
the text of the article, even though Spanish women have more children, the increase in the fertility rate is
due, in an important part, to the foreign population. This is because the number of children born of
immigrant women increased by 16.4% in 2007, a figure which constitutes 18.8% of the total number of
births registered in Catalonia that year. Moroccan women were the ones who had the most children,
accounting for 21.6% of the total number of births given by foreign women, according to this media.

contraception is very different, as well as the way these women perceive abortion. In
this respect, for instance, abortion is an accessible resource to Romanian women and
it is relatively normal for them to have had more than one abortion. In contrast,
Romanian women are the ones who use the contraceptive pill and condoms the most.
Meanwhile, for Latin American women, abortion is not particularly common, even if
they have had a perhaps striking number of several sudden miscarriages. 8 Latin
American women do not use contraception much, and when they do, they mostly use
the Ogino-Knaus rule (the calendar method or counting the days, as the interviewees
call it), which is not very reliable, and secondly, the intrauterine device (IUD), which
they refer to as the T or Copper-T. With regard to the Moroccan women, abortion is a
virtually unknown practice, as is the use of methods of contraception.
A large number of the immigrant women are in single-parent families. They have one or
more children, who are looked after by their maternal relatives (only occasionally by the
fathers or their paternal relatives) in the countries of origin. These women have a
primary education and, to a lesser extent, a secondary education. In very few cases
have they been educated at a higher level. Likewise, the majority have no network of
contacts in Spanish society (mother, partner, extended family, friendships, etc.) who
can provide them with help and protection if they need it. Living far away from their
sons and daughters, from their partners, from their families and from their community of
reference, they are extremely lonely: Im here alone, very alone, completely alone. I
have no one all of my family are over there, in my country , is a frequent
statement in their stories. Solitude is a further factor that increases the likelihood of an
unwanted pregnancy.
Based on the interviews, I observed that the most unwanted pregnancies and abortions
usually take place between a few months and the first 2 or 3 years of the women
residence in Catalonia. The unwanted pregnancies tend to arise following a
relationship (with or without cohabitation) lasting between 2 or 3 months and 2 years,
and also when immigrant women reunite 9 with their partners. Frequently, the men will
abandon the woman when they find out she is pregnant; even reunified husbands will,
while blaming only the woman for the pregnancy. Many women assume the pregnancy
as part of their own blame 10 , and even relieve their partner of any blame for the
pregnancy. And usually neither they nor their partner uses contraception, according to
their stories. They do not use contraception, they say, because it is God who
decides if you become pregnant or not, in my country, a man who uses a
condom is a sissy, or the doctor did not want to place the T [IUD] in me. He
said that I was very young and without a partner..
By order of the number of times they were mentioned, the reasons why these women
have an abortion are as follows: lack of the economic resources to raise a child;
8

This level of reoccurrence made me curious as to the conditions and causes of these supposedly
spontaneous miscarriages. I found out that a lot of times the miscarriage was the result of acts of violence
perpetrated by the pregnant womans partner against her.
9
Family reunification: Under the current law, once they have lived in Spain for 5 years or more,
immigrant women may start the application process for family reunification; that is, to arrange for their
partners and their daughters and sons to emigrate to the country (who are legally permitted to live in the
country, but not work in it). Colloquially, the term for this is reunifying someone.
10
Generally, blame is the failure to fulfill moral or legal obligations, deliberately or through unintention or
negligence . Theological fault is the voluntary contravention of the law of God, and in Law, blame
becomes subjective element of the crime. At the same time, the term guilt means the personal
inner feeling of ones own responsibility in the perpetration of what one considers a crime or offense
(Diccionario La Enciclopedia, 2003). More precisely, since there is a strong connection between the
individual and inner experience of guilt and different Western religious ideologies, it recurs in the stories in
the form of regret for failing to comply with the law of God. The notions of blame and guilt have penetrated
culture so intensely that the synonym responsibility becomes virtually invisible, the use of which would
seem more appropriate in the allegedly lay societies of the West.

abandonment by their partner; parentage of one or more children already; the

impossibility of employment that having a child would entail; and not wishing to have a
child at a specific time.
Apart from the financial instability, the solitude and the major social and cultural change
immigrant women must experience, they must also tackle the contradiction that having
an abortion entails if religious beliefs lead them to say they are, for instance, very
believing, Im a very staunch Catholic, very devout Evangelical, or I truly believe in
God. Under these epithets they have an abortion, and later many of them suffer
intensely for having undergone the operation.

Spanish and Catalan Interviewees

The majority of Spanish and Catalan women interviewed come from Barcelona city and
its metropolitan area, and most of them from an urban context. Most of them had a
secondary school education, although in several cases they had not completed these
studies, claiming that they did not enjoy studying, started to have boyfriends, had to
work because their families needed money, and other reasons. Often they had not
been in education at a higher level.
In most cases, these women were in vulnerable circumstances due to a lack of
financial resources because they did not have a stable job and they did not receive
state benefits for unemployment, since they had not worked enough time to be eligible
for it, or they worked within the black economy. However, several women left their jobs
when they become pregnant, thus becoming dependent on their husband or partner.
They were unable to go back to this same employment situation after they had their
child, since their level of education prevented them from rejoining the labor market,
they had no one who can look after the baby while they were at work, or they could not
afford a nursery or secure a state benefit for this purpose.
Therefore, with a certain frequency, these women were forced to become housewives
and to depend on the income of their husbands or partners, whose salaries tended to
only just meet the familys needs. From the interviews I detected that in quite a short
space of time the first conflicts between the woman and her husband or partner would
arise, and tensions progressively acted upon their relationship, leading to separations
and arguments, later followed by reconciliations and further separations, in between
which unwanted pregnancies occur.
The most recurrent reasons why these women decided to have an abortion can be
categorized into: not having the economic resources to have a child (or another one);
not wishing to have a child at the time the woman became pregnant; having no partner,
or being too young. In most of the cases recorded, Spanish and Catalan women
expressed their pain and their feelings of guilt for getting pregnant and having to have
an abortion.
With regard to religious practices and their influence on coming to terms with abortion,
most of the women had an eclectic stance, based on the notion of lesser evil. That is,
to have an abortion in view of the responsibility that having a child entails and not being
able to provide them with the necessary care and the belief that God will understand
their dilemma and the choice they made. This does not mean that they do not go
through an emotionally difficult time during the process they must follow for the abortion
and afterwards.

Observations on the sexual and reproductive health of the women, immigrants or

otherwise
Many of the immigrant women and Spanish and Catalan women referred to the
problems and barriers they had to face to have access to reproductive and sexual
health services. These restrictions and setbacks affect immigrant women even more
so, for often they do not know how the health system works and how to use it. This is
apart from other factors, such as not understanding of the language, and the meaning
that health, illness, pregnancy, abortion and maternity may have in different cultures.
The issue is that conditions which, to some extent, one would believe to have been
dealt with in Catalan society today, have not been resolved in practice, and involve a
complex process. This is clear from the explanations given by the interviewees.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the changes that have taken place in Spain in the last
thirty years have been remarkable and have made fundamental changes to the lives of
Spanish women, such as the legalization of contraceptives in 1978, the divorce law in
1981, the legalization of abortion in three specific circumstances in 1985, and progress
in the achievement of equal rights for men and women. This is reflected in the decision
many women make to look after their reproductive health to the point of feeling solely
responsible for this care. Currently, the rules and regulations are interpreted as a
statement of maturity or of a healthy lifestyle based on prevention and on women
taking care of themselves.
After analyzing the data obtained, I can assert that immigrant women are undergoing
the same process that most Spanish and Catalan women have been undertaking over
the past 30 years, with regard to sexual and reproductive health services (in the
interest of taking care of themselves, as the interviewees refer to it; i.e., the use of
contraception and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections). Resources for
sexual and reproductive health that, furthermore, have important deficiencies which
affect not only immigrant women but all women, for public health is a right in Spain.
For this reason, despite the presumed progress, certain issues persist. Some of the
most common aspects, for instance, are the scarce resources allocated for addressing
the sexual and reproductive health of men and women; overcrowding; delays of several
months in the provision of services; an endemic lack of information; difficulty in
acquiring contraception, whether due to the lack of doctors prescription (particularly in
the case of emergency contraception) or due to its price; the inherent failures of
methods of contraception themselves; and the poor transfer of information by certain
sectors of medical personnel in general.
Driven by the above-mentioned circumstances, but at the same time based on
personal resources and capabilities, specific aspects must be considered, such as the
difficulties women have in using the methods of contraception correctly. Another such
aspect is the mens inhibition where contraceptive precautions are concerned, as if
they were solely the womans responsibility, and even the refusal to use a condom, as
a sign of their masculinity. Men also argue that Its not the same (what they
experience cannot be compared to using a condom) or because God wishes to send a
child. You should not disrespect Him by preventing it. Normally, the default outcomes
of these actions are unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and sexually transmitted
infections.

Medical discourse and maternity

To some extent, biomedical knowledge is the official representation of the body, and it
plays a fundamental role in control of the body. Medicine, therefore, is a type of
domination of the body because it unites power over the individual and over society as
a body, made obvious in the colossal subject that is public health. In other words, it is
obvious in the case of in health management by members of a countrys government,
an undoubted form of political power, where economic, medical and social factors must
all be united, and each one according to its own logic. In this way, observation and
examination, which are two essential features of medicine, are developmental
processes as well an exercise of power over bodies.
Medicine is a disciplining operator that consolidates established doctrine. Understood
as good and rewarding, it is constantly subordinating the body to power. It is crosscutting, and affects people from birth to death; they are not fully alive if medicine does
not manage their health, nor are they definitively dead until a death certificate has been
issued, although socio-cultural ways and content are diverse.
According to Detrez (2002:141), medicine has dual powers: the power to identify
disease, and the power to define it by naming it. Health, therefore, is a political domain.
The creation of new medical categories is a highly powerful tool because it allows a byproduct of the connection between social and political powers to be placed in a
biological sphere. In this context, the doctors aim is both to provide care and to play a
role in society; that is, to pronounce a patient as ill.
Often doctors accompany their physical activity with moral manipulation, in the sense
that the patient acknowledges the doctors authority. These are physical and moral
actions that have a more powerful impact on the women by way of gynecologization,
the specific operation in which a woman becomes the gynecologized woman (Nievas,
1999:186). According to Nievas, it is the manner in which medical knowledge views
women, making women prisoners of their reproductive function and giving it a status
beyond medical technology to place it in the realm of the social, defining and
reinventing women as guided reproductive individuals. It is medicalization, which is a
political maneuver performed on the body of women. It is a raison detat
metamorphosed into medical interest (Nievas, 1999:187).
The medical discourse on health becomes a moral discourse, based on individual
responsibility, even on individual blame, construed as a fault committed voluntarily:
The gynecologist told meshe said its your fault, if you had made him use a
condom you would not be pregnant The moral discourse in medicine acquires a
preventive tone, assumed by individuals as what must be and based on principles
that have a growing intention to control spheres of supposed intimacy. Foucault (1983:
143, 146147) shows how revolutionary attitudes towards the body and disease were
established in the 18th century. The body was transformed into an organism, and the
organism into a useful or a reparable tool, whose disorders can be foreseen and
controlled. Based on this approach, aspects of life, illness, and death are organized in
such a way that death goes from being an event experienced to an event studied
(Foucault, 1983: 200203 and 317318).
Agamben (1998:212) points out that life and death are not scientific concepts, but
political ones and, for this reason, they only take on an exact meaning by way of a
decision linked to what he calls the state of exception; that is, the State makes a
decision using the regulatory power it exercises through medicine. This perspective
can be extrapolated to the politicization and decision for the practice of abortion,
upon the State establishing the terms and conditions for its legality or illegality.

The body acquires particular importance when it can procreate; more specifically, when
it can become maternal, which, in quite a number of cases, seems as if it could have
happened suddenly, as an interviewee explains: I wasnt expecting to get pregnant;
it was just one time [a single sexual encounter]and after so much timethat I didnt
even think about it Motherhood, thought of as bringing a child into the world is
considered a universal experience since the framework for all human beings, at least
so far, has been the female body. Motherhood understood as the destiny of women
and fertility as divine will, identified in the stories of the interviewees, the symbolic
effects of which are imprinted on womens mindset, causing them to integrate ideas
that stress their role and destiny as mothers Whenever abortion is mentioned or
written about in the media, for instance, pregnant women are referred to as mothers,
not as women who may, or may not wish to be mothers.
Ultimately, motherhood is the attainment of the female desire to be fertile and the
creation of a being, an imaginary one where nature and the material existence of the
being are concerned, which shall or shall not be born, and automatically classing it as
child, baby, or offspring. Therefore, when faced with the decision to have an
abortion and to go ahead with the operation, quite a number of the interviewees show
signs of pain and anguish for having killed my child, even when the pregnancy was
only beginning.
The application of medical technology, in the form of ultrasound, changes the symbolic
representation of the inside of the female body and of the inside of the womb, which
ceases to be a mysterious, life-creating space and becomes a visible place that can be
explored and monitored medically. Even while they acknowledged the abstract nature
of their attitude, most of the interviewees expressed their dilemma, the internal conflict,
or what happens inside of me, when facing the decision to have an abortion. Perhaps
this situation is created by the fact that the ultrasound image makes the embryo and
the fetus take on a human dimension and, based on this symbolic construction, the
dilemma arises. To have the abortion is perceived as a betrayal of a symbolic child
upon whom, due to the effect of socialization and the power ideology, status as a
human being in its own right is conferred.
In the sphere of science, the intrusion of technology into the intimacy of the female
body is justified by the claim that they help women to accomplish their wish to become
a mother or to have an abortion. The view into the womb opens up the body of
women, and the embryo or the fetus becomes a visible being, with its own entity, for
which the woman carrying it is responsible and yet, at the same time, it is no longer
completely hers. This is because medicine has a partial control over the embryo or
fetus, owing to its visualization, and, on the other hand, because society as a whole
becomes legally responsible for a being identified as a person.
It seems that the number of terms for what is in the womb is multiplying, associating it
with a categorization that aims to be concise and scientific in order to establish the
legal, medical, ethical, religious, social and cultural aspects of abortion. These are
precise terms, which are not purely technical, to refer to different stages of the
embryos or fetus development. There is always an effort being made to create a new
classification. This can be observed, for instance, with the term pre-embryo, linked to
the intention to legitimize scientific research using little-developed organisms.
In bioethics, there are those who use the term pre-embryo to refer to the human
embryo in the first stage of its development. Other approaches do not allow this
distinction, and are of the understanding that the embryo stage consists of the moment
of conception through to 90 days of pregnancy, at which point the embryo is then
referred to as the fetus. This categorization creates a symbolic representation that

acknowledges the fetus as a person and gives rise to the emergence of fetal rights.
Following these fictions, there are situations that lead to claims for compensation filed
against medical personnel for accidentally destroyed fetuses, or against the woman
who was pregnant for not having observed a required treatment for the fetus, for drug
addiction, or for accidents to the fetus in the womb of the pregnant woman. According
to Boltanski (2004:188), fetal rights are an attack on the right of women because it
allows the legal authorities to place themselves between women and the use they wish
to make of their bodies.
The question of the embryos status stems in part from the purpose of the medical
practices, which are closely connected to the politicallegal discourse on the selection
of sex, artificial reproduction methods, and to the practices for abortion. It is not the
embryo itself that poses the controversy, though, but the fact that it is protected outside
of the body. Whether it is considered part of the body or a detached product of it, a
potential person or a cluster of cells, there will always be a symbolic interpretation: that
of a mechanical perspective of a human being, and of a mechanical process being
more human. It is pure medical creation using artificial reproduction technology, in
which the embryo seemingly becomes a virtual object, since it is kept cold, kept out of
time, and outside of the body. This poses conflicts for couples or for women who, often,
cannot bear the thought of disposing of embryos because the symbols imagined lead
them to think of embryos as tangible children, as Gods gift, or as lives being
destroyed.

Abortion and legalpolitical discourse

In abortion, the controversies the embryo or fetus poses are connected to dilemmas
that would not have arisen if the embryo or fetus had not been represented, not only in
the context of the visual, but also in the legal sphere. Based on the visualization of the
embryo or fetus, the legal question arises and there is debate about its status as a
person and fetal rights. In the judicial domain there is the law, which is constantly
arbitrated by specific members of society who can decide whether a particular
judgment or other is inappropriate, dishonest, appropriate, legal, etc., based on values
of their own. Therefore, the law may not be completely detached from moral issues,
formulated in a language different to the legal domain, without the risk of losing its
strength. So it seems that the law is a mere device used by the dominant classes to
consolidate their power. Legislation is created according to the political ideology of
each government in each society. When a new political party comes to power, laws are
abolished, amended or ordered so that, although previously they had been in
accordance to law, they may cease to be so later, and come to act against individuals
themselves. Abortion legislation is one of the issues subjected to this kind of political
intervention.
With regard to Spanish legislation, although each autonomous region and the two
autonomous cities 11 in Spain has a certain level of competence in decisions regarding
11

In spite of the governing legislation, the situation of access to abortion in Spain is riddled with
inequalities. This situation is apparent in a country in which the public health service performs less than
3% of abortion operations and in which the cost of the operation is assumed, in most cases, by the women
themselves. Even though abortion has been legalized (in three circumstances), there are in 10
autonomous regions in total in the services catalogue of the Spanish National Health Service
Extremadura, Castile-La Mancha, Aragon, the Basque Country, Cantabria, La Rioja, the Canary Islands,
the Balearic Islands, and Navarre have no system to ensure financing for abortion. Furthermore, no
autonomous region has a protocol for approaching abortion. This deficiency is the cause of the huge
inequalities concerning information, financing, and abortion service provision. Therefore, it is possible to go
from a situation such as that of Navarre, in which no public or private clinic performs abortions, to that of
Andalusia, where the operation is arranged with private clinics and, in most cases, financed.

abortion, there is specific legislation that duly regulates the practice of abortion and the
public and private establishments where abortions are performed: Spanish Organic
Law 9/1985, of July 5, whereby Article 417bis of the Penal Code was amended
(hereinafter Organic Law 9/1985) which sets out three circumstances in which
abortion may be legally performed, and Spanish Royal Decree 2409/1986, of 21
November , which sets out the criteria with which authorized clinics must comply and
the provisions for the legal practice of abortion.
An aspect that I believe it is important to comment upon, since it partially explains the
ratification of Organic Law 9/1985 and the abortion scenario in Spain, is that when the
Spanish Socialists came to power in 1982, and with the legalization of abortion being
one of the promises they made in their election manifesto, the process to enact a law
that permitted abortion was speeded up. In 1983, the Council of Ministers approved a
text for the preparation of a new article, Article 417bis, which would be incorporated
into the Penal Code. The original article, Article 417, was not amended, and therefore
abortion remains a crime in Spain (Arroyo-Zapatero, 1983:70), although the new article
provides that:
1. There shall be no penalties for abortions performed by or under the direction
of a physician in an approved public or private health centre or establishment,
provided that the woman gives her express consent to the procedure and one of
the following conditions is met:
1. the abortion is necessary to avert a serious risk to the physical or
mental health of the pregnant woman, in accordance with an opinion
expressed prior to the abortion by a physician, other than the one
performing the abortion or under whose direction the abortion is to
be performed, and who holds an appropriate specialist qualification.
Should there an emergency due to risk to the life of the pregnant
woman, the required report and express consent may be omitted.
2. the pregnancy is the result of rape (Article 429), provided that the
rape has been reported to the police and the abortion is performed
within the first twelve weeks of the pregnancy; or
3. that the fetus, if carried to term, will suffer from severe physical or
mental defects, provided that the abortion is performed within the
first twenty-two weeks of the pregnancy and the medical opinion,
communicated prior to the abortion, is expressed by two specialists
of an approved public or private health center or establishment,
neither of whom is the physician by whom or under whom the
abortion is to be performed.
2. Under the above circumstances, a pregnant woman is not penalized even if
the abortion is not performed in an approved public or private centre or
establishment, or if the prescribed medical opinions have not been expressed.
(Organic Law 9/1985).
Organic Law 9/1985 has been classed as weak because, although the grounds on
which it is based justify the need for time frames, no social requirement was included

But there is more still. There are five autonomous regions that have no public service which performs
abortions: Navarre, Castile-La Mancha, Castile-Leon, Extremadura, and Murcia. Neither do the
autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. So, only eight autonomous regions Andalusia, Asturias, Aragon,
the Canary Islands, Castile-Leon, Catalonia, Madrid, and Valencia have private abortion clinics.

10

and, therefore, only a narrow system of specific requirements was passed. 12 Since it
was becoming increasingly obvious that the current law does not provide sufficient
legal and medical protection for women who have an abortion and of the medical
personnel who attend to them, in 2000 the Mixed Parliamentary Group presented a
new bill in which it acknowledged that in 15 years, although there has been a relative
standardization of abortion, there are still complaints filed with the courts and police
against professionals and women. The reasons that were presented for the purpose of
broadening the law were tailored to the circumstances that were taking place in Spain
in 2000, in which abortion was still a practice that carried a high legal risk. If someone
insisted on justifying that having a child against her will does not carry mental health
problems for the woman, or that these problems do not justify having an abortion, they
can file a claim based on it.
Firstly, this legal uncertainty violates the intimacy and freedom of women. On the other
hand, meanwhile, the uneven criteria in the application of the Organic Law 9/1985
means that, due to the social pressure, court rulings are not enforced. Moreover, it
does address the underlying cause, which is precisely the flaw in the law itself, a
circumstance of judicial vulnerability that also leads medical personnel to abstain from
performing abortions and the conscientious objection by others in hospitals and clinics
of the public health care system.
The issue of the legitimacy of abortion poses questions of diverse scope; for instance,
the explanation as to why up to 10, 12, or 24 weeks of amenorrhea a woman who is
feeling desperate may decide, or it would appear that she can decide for herself, to
have an abortion. It is not a question of a right that the pregnant woman has over her
own body, since the alleged voluntary decision depends on the decision of medical
experts. Under current legislation in Spain, and in many other European countries, it is
up to the doctors; therefore, the right is transferred from the woman to them, based on
an arbitrary age of pregnancy that differs from one country to the other. What is
prohibited from the third month of pregnancy in France, for example, is legal in England
or Holland until the fifth month of the pregnancy.
Linked to the legitimacy of abortion is the confusing terminology that is used to classify
it voluntary termination of pregnancy or VTOP perhaps since this avoids using
the term abortion. The question is that such terminology neither corresponds to the
law nor to the reality in Spain for, in this country, a woman can have an abortion under
a law based on requirements, that is, Organic Law 9/1985. Since the law stipulates
that there must be a reason for the abortion and sets forth certain restrictions, the
implication is that a woman does not decide to have an abortion voluntarily, but out of
necessity created by a circumstance. It is only when the pregnant womans life is in
danger that there are no time limits. Consequently, rather than a voluntary termination
of the pregnancy, there is a de-criminalization of abortion.
Likewise, the non-specific terminology in the aforementioned Organic Law 9/1985 is
obvious in the reference to the physician who is performing the abortion or under
whose direction the abortion is to be performed, and sets out the circumstances in
which there shall be no penalties for the abortion. Therefore, if the voluntary decision
to have an abortion is the only reason for having one, the abortion would be illegal.
Obviously, there is no reference to the consent that must be given to any medical act,
according to the provisions of General Law 14/1986 on Health, of April 25. The
seeming equality with other European countries, where the womans voluntary decision
12

Social recommendation which in this investigation becomes the main reason why women decide to
have an abortion, understand as necessity because of not having the financial resources to attend to the
birth of a child. A fact that establishes the legal insufficiency of Organic Law 9/1985.

11

is legal grounds for abortion 13 within a time limit, as in France for instance, may have
led to use of the same term that, in the Spanish case, is completely incorrect.
It happens that there is another term, lawful termination of pregnancy, or LTOP,
which is a euphemism, for it leads one to have doubts or to construe that other terms
for abortion (abortion, VTOP, etc.) are unlawful. The classification LTOP is used for
abortions performed in public health centers and due to indisputable fetal malformation
(up to a limit of 22 weeks of pregnancy); rape (after the rape has been reported and up
to a limit of 12 weeks of pregnancy); and severe, undeniable illness of the pregnant
woman (HIV/AIDS, cancer, diagnosed mental illness). In 2006, such operations made
up 2.51% of the total number of abortions performed (Spanish Department of Health
and Consumer Affairs, 2007:18). Abortions due to a womans mental health, however,
are classed under the term VTOP and are performed in authorized private clinics
(88.38%) and in private hospitals (9.11%) (Spanish Department of Health and
Consumer Affairs, 2007).
Another aspect to highlight is the World Health Organizations (WHO) definition of
health: Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not
merely the absence of disease or infirmity (World Health Organization. United Nations
Chronicles of the World Health Organization). With the WHOs definition of health in
mind, unwanted pregnancies obviously have a negative impact on the mental and
physical health of pregnant women. Even though Spanish law does not take a pregnant
womans voluntary decision into consideration, current legislation permits abortion in
almost all cases in which the woman does not want to continue the pregnancy, by
authorizing termination on the grounds of a risk to her mental health.
There are some hidden ambiguities in this apparent standardization of the practice of
abortion in Spain, based on law and on the existing facilities, that is, legislation on
abortion and on clinics and establishments authorized to perform abortions. One
example of this is that although 101,592 abortions were performed in 2006 (Spanish
Department for Health and Consumer Affairs, 2007:17), abortion is a practice with
which medical personnel are virtually unfamiliar. This is the case because it is not on
the syllabus in most medical and nursing schools, or in the training of resident
physicians who specialize in gynecology. Thus, most medical personnel who learn
methods for abortion do so outside of their medical education and training, from
colleagues in the profession (Rodrguez Armario, 2000). Moreover, the medical
personnel who perform the prenatal diagnosis that detects fetal anomalies is ignorant
of the resources, legal requirements, and methods for abortion, and provides either
inaccurate information or no information about the option to abort in these
circumstances (Rodrguez Armario, 2000).
I must also add to the issues Ive presented that of the growing politicization of medical,
legalpolitical, and religious discourses following the Spanish Socialists victory in the
general election on March 9, 2008. Social forces are mobilizing themselves and
demanding a new law on abortion, and to do it they are putting pressure on the
Spanish Socialists to prove their self-proclaimed sensitivity towards social issues. The
question, therefore, is whether the Spanish Socialists will have enough parliamentary
support to amend the Organic Law 9/1985 because, to do so, they must be backed by
two thirds of the Spanish Parliament and it seems that they do not have enough
support.
13

In any case, the time limit of 12 weeks, as in the case of France, or of 14 weeks as is contemplated in
Spain, is an essential requirement if the current law is amended. Voluntary decision, therefore, shall
continue to be subject to the rule and will lose its meaning of Determination of ones own will by mere
desire and with no other reason for to resolve it and its quality of voluntary (Real Academia Espaola
Diccionario de la lengua espaola.

12

If discourses have become politicized, above all between 2007 and 2008, it is because
there is a visible movement against abortion, and this movement is very active in
countries such as Spain, Italy, and England. In late 2007, a huge controversy erupted
over the persecution of private abortion clinics. In Barcelona, for instance, the police
have raided several clinics, and in Madrid these clinics are being pursued by the
administration, by different bodies of the autonomous region of Madrid. In addition to all
of this, it should be added that there are Catholic and hard-line Catholic groups who
declare on an almost daily basis that the courts must close down abortion clinics and
send the medical personnel who work in them to prison.
Until now, Organic Law 9/1985 seemed sufficient because it has been construed in the
broadest sense. However, when controversy breaks out, the law is so ambiguous that if
someone chooses to interpret it from a more prohibitive perspective and consider that
the medical personnel who use it in a broad sense are criminals, and if they also find a
loophole in the law to act, they can turn both the women who have the abortions and
the medical personnel who work at the clinics and establishments were abortions are
performed into criminals. A number of women were charged with illegal abortion and,
for several weeks, no one knew what their fate would be. The women relived their
painful ordeal and, furthermore, they had to witness how what they thought was a right
of theirs transformed them into potential criminals.
At the same time, the media also take it upon themselves, with varying degrees of
success (and in line with their own political sympathies), to disseminate messages that
scare women, making them have doubts as to the legality of abortion in Spain. One of
the consequences is that they come to the Association terrified, frightened they will be
reported. Another outcome is that, because they are afraid, they do not come to the
Association, or they do when too many weeks of pregnancy have passed, and they do
not know how to resolve the situation. The worst scenario is when they do not go to the
clinics and they cannot terminate the pregnancy, so they resort to abortion methods
which put their own life in danger, particularly by using the drug called Cytotec. 14 This
testimony from one interviewee illustrates the whole situation:
A friend who travelled here brought me them [Cytotec] because theyre cheaper in
my country and here theyre so expensive () I didnt know how many to take, so
I took three and then I placed another two there down there in my private parts,
and they didnt do anything to me () I asked my friend for more and she warned
me that I should be careful because so many pills were going to do something horrible
to me. But I wanted it removed [to abort the pregnancy] and asked her for another four
aaaand Good God! It did something horrible that I never thought of: it made me
bleed! I was taken to the emergency ward because blood was running down my legs
Oh, the pain! () but my pregnancy didnt end .

The connection between religion and politics

With government being its logical conclusion, politics consists fundamentally of rules, of
a way to make decisions, of procedures to perform certain tasks and of expectations
regarding rights and privileges. Politics are likewise linked to the rules and regulations
of society, which set out who must weild power, which is more or less coercive, to
attain aims that are supposedly in the interest of the group in question.

14

The drug Cytotec, manufactured by the Pfizer laboratory, was not invented to terminate pregnancies.
The leaflet that comes with the pills specifies that the drug is designed to protect the stomach and is for
gastric and duodenum ulcers. But misoprostol, the drugs active principle, also causes contractions in the
womb that facilitate the expulsion of the embryo or fetus. For this reason, it has been sold secretly in Latin
America for years, and, at present, is easy to acquire over the Internet.

13

Government and politics are institutions implemented in a society to regulate the

process of searching for reward and to reduce the disruptive, destructive tendency
inherent in competition for this same reward, which may degenerate into a war of
everyone against everyone. Therefore, the rules according to which coercive power is
allocated and the process under which the governing principles for enforced power and
authority are implemented are understood as a political concept. This concept fits the
one Harold Lasswell (1958) proposes in his classic definition, in which he specifies that
politics is the process of determining the distribution of rewards in society and
balancing power relations and protests. Linked to this notion, Johnstone (2007:146)
adds that religion is neither powerless nor does it remain silent; rather, it exerts a major
influence on politics.
A significant sphere in which religion penetrates the political system is moral
legislation. There is a remarkable amount of religious influence on the laws; for
instance, in the form of restricting work on certain days (Friday, Sunday, days of
saints); in deeming certain days of the year public holidays (Christmas, Easter); in
prohibiting the consumption of certain products (alcohol, pork and suckling lambs); and
in the rejection of abortion, euthanasia, and contraceptives.
In line with this interference of religion, I can establish that the official principle of the
three religions that I have gathered from the interviewees Catholic, Muslim, and
Evangelical rejects any selection between beings that are created, a mandate that is
outside the domain of any kind of earthly authority and ranks above it. These three
faiths do not deny the role of sexuality in conception, but consider that sexual
intercourse does not always procreate, and that when it does this is because God has
allowed this to happen. In these faiths, sexual intercourse is only completely justified
for the purposes of procreation, so conception itself takes on a spiritual, almost
sacramental, character.
The interviewees who declared they were Catholics assert that their doctrine maintains
that any kind of artificial interference with conception (contraceptives) is, to some
extent, sinful, since it obstructs conception and the sexual intercourse therefore
becomes unjustifiable. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has always tried to block any
attempt to amend laws which make abortion more accessible and facilitate the use of
contraception. Its ideology has penetrated the collective consciousness deeply and
there it remains, according to the testimonies gathered. However, some believers
maintain the idea that anti-life choices sometimes emerge due to difficult or dramatic
situations, situations of solitude, or of anguish with regard to what may happen. These
circumstances may mitigate the resultant personal blame and feeling of guilt for many
women who make an anti-life choice. It may be considered as mercy 15 for people who
breach the law, faced with the lack of strength or resources to do anything else:
its because this [abortion] is not practiced in my country. You cant have an abortion
there, because were different. There they think that if you got pregnant, its because it
was your turn. No way!... And dont even let your family know that you take those pills
that stop you from getting pregnant, or from using the T [IUD] because theyre going to
disapprove of you because there we believe that that as I was going to say that is a
sin! Because God is the one who sends you your children, and it is wrong to not accept
what God has sent you () Ive had a really horrible time because of what I did
[have an abortion], and every day, every day Im on this earth, I ask God to forgive
me.

The Muslim women I met show similar beliefs to the Catholic women regarding the
disapproval of abortion, although it is approved of if it is a matter of saving the life of the
15

Mercy as it is understood under the Christian doctrine, that of a divine attribute by which Gods
creatures are forgiven.

14

pregnant woman. According to some of the Muslim women I have met in the research,
their religion allows them to have an abortion before 40 days from the moment of
conception have elapsed, when the pregnancy is a mere case of bloods that are
coming together or it is only a thing that is not a child, they say. For it is written in the
Koran, claim the interviewees, that only God gives life and God takes life. In any
case, all operations that affect the embryo or the fetus are comparable to an action
performed upon a live being that has already been born, an act which Islam condemns
as if it was a crime:
Muslim believer, I, yes, very devout, but I had to do it [have an abortion] Praise
be to Allah! May I receive His forgiveness because I have not been able to have a child,
for I have been for five months without a home and a job, and I have no money, nothing.
But a child is sacred to a Muslim, and you know that a Muslim woman can only have a
child if she marries a man. If she does not get married, then if she becomes pregnant
everyone tells you youre a bad Muslim that youre a whore! () A Muslim
woman can, however, have the child removed before 40 days have passed. She can
have it removed and it is okay. But after 40 days, she cannot, you cannot, because it is
bad if you kill a child and that is what I did Praise be to Allah! For He knows what I
did [she cries].

With regard to the Evangelical interviewees, some of them feel that it is up to ones
individual conscience, in their unmediated conversation with God, to decide if an
abortion is lawful, though all women of this faith are completely against it in practice.
The interviewees assert that God cares for all human beings and accepts them as they
are, no matter how immoral or unworthy they may be considered, for He wholly
respects them as free individuals. These women also say that people are not strictly
responsible for any misfortunes that may befall them; they are evils that occur and are
beyond their possibility of control. For this reason, the appropriate attitude towards
abortion tends to be nonjudgmental when the abortion is justified, but they say that
any other kind of abortion is indeed a crime and goes against the law of God:
well, Im neither married nor single. I am actually a mother I have three girls who I
brought up myself because Im not with him () but this [having an abortion] is
going to be really hard for me because God wont be able to look me in the face or
anything, and in the revival meeting [shes an Evangelical] I wont say a single word,
because if they find out they wont even let me in! And without the church, Im
nothing because it gives me strength to bring up my daughters And I promised God
that this wasnt going to happen again [it will be her third abortion] and that Im going to
go every day, every day on this earth, and pray for His forgiveness because I feel really
bad () I ask God to forgive me because this is killing murdering my son or
daughter because I still dont know what it will be, but this is killing and, to me, this is
very well I know that I shouldnt do this, that its really wrong, that its an act
against God, who sends it to me [the pregnancy] () God knows what Im going
through, and on top of it Im to blame He knows .

One of the other issues that emerged from my research is the notion of redeeming the
blame for having an abortion through suffering many of the interviewees have
expressed. This form of redemption is directly linked to experiencing pain. When a
person experiences and expresses feelings, these feelings adjust to the cultural
classification of the society to which the person belongs. A clear example of this is the
experience of pain, which is not a mere biological fact, but which has its own meaning,
since human beings experience it differently depending on their life and social origins.
Thus, there is the implicit content transmitted by the membership group and,
furthermore, each person reacts differently to pain in their own way depending on their
threshold for it. All things considered, it may be agreed that pain is culturally acquired
and not a universal fact, because people feel things on different levels.
People learn through socialization, which includes religious beliefs among other
significant aspects. The common school of thought from this perspective is that there

15

are two established destinies for the body: the blessed body that will be rewarded when
it departs from this world, and the suffering body, which leads the way to the blessed
body along a path of sacrifice and redemption. For this reason, pain and bodily torture
are praised as gestures to redeem oneself of guilt in the eyes of ones god and receive
eternal life. This may be the cause of the desire to amend for the wrong-doings
committed by suffering, even though the body acquires the status of a mere instrument.
Having studied the information provided by the interviewees, I sense that pain is an
extreme way of transforming subjectivity via the body. Physical suffering is one of the
most immediate ways of experiencing a change inside, and, associated with the mental
pain linked to religious ideology, it becomes a painful test that makes the woman who
is new to abortion suffer a shock to her bodys nature (those who have had an abortion
before feel the shock too, but to a lesser degree). This experience of change is
memorable (because you learn what not to do, say the interviewees), and it can give
the woman the chance to show her ability to control herself. For quite a few women,
experiencing pain, therefore, becomes something normal when it is associated with
the redemption from blame for infringing divine principles. It seems that this is an
essential transition for these women, since, by experiencing it, their soul is released
from the unbearable weight of their sin:
Ill learn, that way Ill learn because I believe that when you have to go through a
rough time you learn, that if you dont have a clue, then its of no use to you () I
think Ill learn from this forever because Id never felt pain like this before Of course,
since its the first time this has happened to me [have an abortion], then I cant tell you
how Id be if they had done it to me again which isnt the case thank God! Im not
having an easy time because Im a believer, although it doesnt look like it because I am
in the situation Im in and theyll terminate the pregnancy. But I believe in God, and Ive
spoken to Him, and I pray for Him to forgive me () I think that, because of all Im
suffering with this and the rough time Im having, Hell understand because, of
course, if I didnt feel something like those who go and terminate and just go on like
nothing has happened!), I think I would be living with the punishment for ever because
there is no repentance because you do not ask Him for forgiveness, but with everything
Im going though, with the sufferingI believe He will forgive me.

Ultimately, the three faiths Catholic, Muslim and Evangelical place the emphasis
on a spiritual conception, restricting the governance of the earthly institutions over the
rights of the first-born child, and, for their own theological reasons, condemn abortion.
Driven by the requirement to defend the possibility of God incarnate, born from the
womb of a woman, a reflection about the status of the embryo or the fetus is
undertaken. The complexity of that study triggers the debate about the fetal stage and,
building further on this perspective, the question is posed of when the embryo or fetus
becomes a person. This is related directly to the complex controversy which, on a
legalpolitical level, arises regarding this question, too. And from the testimonies
presented here, one can imagine how the ideas comprising each one of the medical,
legalpolitical, and religious spheres intertwine to form a single discourse that clearly
influences the decisions of women who have an abortion.

Special Remarks
Despite the universal character of abortion, it is not approached as a similar practice to
others, even though termination of pregnancy within the first three months is the most
common operation, or one of the most common operations, performed upon women in
Spain. But abortion has never been treated as a normal practice and, with the
exception of in medical books, it is not declared as a service or hardly ever so.
Abortion, therefore, is not linked to one form or another of ritual or symbolism. The
scarce representation of abortion can be linked to the fact that, until recent times, the

16

embryo or fetus was not acknowledged as a being with an identity and assessed as
such. Therefore, since it exited the womb prematurely and did not survive, it was given
no surname, and no funeral was held for it.
I can assert that abortion is a difficult practice to cope with for any of the women who
have taken part in this ethnographical research. Basically, it is so because they must
go through their own private worry over a decision that leads them to doubt themselves
because they are more or less consciously establishing loss of control over their own
body. And because, despite the changes that have taken place in society, motherhood
is still womens destiny. This is a fact confirmed by the majority of the interviewees, as
well as by recent studies which have identified that women still perceive motherhood as
natural, the desire for this as inevitable and unquestionable, and a central part in the
construction of normal femininity. Consequently, abortion is no trivial act, and that is
one of the main causes of the problem.
Women must develop a capacity for introspection that will lead them to decipher
expressions and thoughts that are difficult to be aware of because they tend to be
involuntary, a part of their inner self. This process, however, or the attempt to carry it
out, will release them from their responsibility, setting pregnancy and abortion as
independent from religion, politics, medicine, from education, from the family, and
social norms. Even so, this is especially difficult when the different spheres of learning
teach very different values based on the excellence and prestige of women as mothers.
Nonetheless, with this introspection, or attempt to introspect during the interviews, the
women I have met in this research mitigate stress, and they come to experience
abortion as an undesirable but logical act.
On the other hand, the de-criminalization or legalization of abortion, depending on the
country, faces new problems, caused by the development of medicalscientific
technology, the advances of which some pressure groups use to win status for the
embryo or fetus as a person. So, after more than 36 years (24 years in the case of
Spain) of striving to make abortion legal, the credibility and effort of this work has been
undermined by the development of visualization technology. The effect of this
technology has been to reestablish beliefs according to which the embryos or fetuses
that can be seen using ultrasound are autonomous. One must add to this the religious
ideas that are based on traditional moral frameworks and penetrate broad sectors of
society, condemning abortion, classing it as murder, and making criminals of both the
women who have abortions and medical personnel who perform them.
Abortion should be defended from the perspective of law, for abortion is a sexual and
reproductive right; it is a human right. Likewise, it must be defended as the demand of
women, who, as independent beings with faculties of reason, have the right to
terminate pregnancies that invade their own lives and threaten their integrity. The right
to kill has been, fundamentally, a male prerogative, justified by demands linked to a
better life and which range from the indiscriminate killing of animals to the killing of one
another. Therefore, it is not unusual for there still to be disputes over abortion, since it
is a womans prerogative that, historically, has been held by men. Obviously this
statement could be refuted with the argument that throughout history women have
exercised their right to abortion in different ways, a fact which seems undeniable.
However, in those days it was a secret practice and still is in those places where
abortion is illegal that for many women entailed risking their life, and death. These
are nuances that illustrate the vast differences which, in this particular context, go back
to the existing inequalities between men and women.
The impact of abortion has a clearly different scope and intensity, based on the
interaction of factors such as age, socialization, religious faith, and gender relations.

17

But in any case and circumstances, the process of personal acceptance is the
fundamental issue that women will have to change, and, depending on how they do it,
it will have one type of post-abortion consequences or another. Regardless of the
personal process for each woman, the situation in which the abortion is performed
must also be taken into consideration, although both are closely linked. The conditions
that unfold upon the confirmation of the pregnancy. The whole path that the woman
must follow (go to a health care center, come to the Association, admittance at the
clinic where the abortion will be performed, post-abortion check-up, etc.) will become a
process that will either strengthen her feeling that she is acting responsibly or, on the
other hand, make her feel guilty and ashamed.
It is worth bearing in mind that abortion is a transgressive practice because it
contravenes social, cultural, and religious taboos, and it is therefore not enough to
legalize abortion for it to shed its criminal character. And the content assimilated during
socialization includes values, rules and regulations, and ideologies, etc. that women
take on board in particularly, and deeply so, in such a socially valued sphere as is the
creation of human beings.

References
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BOLTANSKI, L. (2004) La condition foetale. Une sociologie de lengendrement et de
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DETREZ, Ch. (2002) La construction social du corps. Paris: Seuil.
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FOUCAULT, M. (1983) Nacimiento de la clnica. Una arqueologa de la mirada mdica.
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NIEVAS, F. (1999) El control social de los cuerpos. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
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Legal Framework
Ley Orgnica 9/1985, de 5 de julio, de reforma del artculo 417 bis del Cdigo Penal
[Spanish Organic Law 9/ 1985, of July 5, 1985, reforming the Spanish Penal Code with
the incorporation of Article 417bis]. [online]. Spanish State Gazette No. 166 pp. 22,
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