The progressive majority of the Constitutional Court has knocked down the paper on the recourse to the abortion law approved in 2010 and which has been revised thirteen years later. The speaker, the conservative magistrate Enrique Arnaldo, has withdrawn from the presentation after his text has not gone ahead, by seven votes in favor of the withdrawal compared to 4 that did support it. According to sources from the body, the majority has rejected the presentation and it has been decided that the vice president, Inmaculada Montalbán, will be the one who will make the new text to dismiss the appeal and declare the constitutionality of the law, as confirmed to La Vanguardia by court sources.
The magistrate endorsed a large part of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's law except for a single article that he considers should be declared unconstitutional. It is about 17.5, related to the previous information that must be given to the woman. The majority of the TC has defended that the norm must be declared constitutional in its entirety.
Now the presentation is assumed by another magistrate to retouch the article that Arnaldo tried to declare unconstitutional. Court sources stress that the idea of the president, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, is to be able to bring the new paper back to plenary as soon as possible.
In the paper now rejected, it was said that, with the current regulation, it is not ensured that the woman is "duly informed before making her decision", which affects the constitutionality of both the rights of women and the protection of the unborn.
Likewise, he proposed two consistent interpretations. The first, on therapeutic abortion, to specify that when talking about health it refers to the physical or mental but not to the social. The other point is made about the conscientious objection of health professionals, among whom, in his opinion, should include all the professionals involved.
Conde-Pumpido put among his priorities when he was elected the review of an appeal that the PP presented at the time and that has been blocked for more than a decade due to the lack of agreement in the body. Several deputies have tried to block the vote with the recusal of four magistrates, which would have caused the plenary session to have been left without the minimum quorum to debate the matter. However, during Wednesday's session, the majority rejected the recusals due to lack of legitimacy of the appellants.
