Spanish Minister Reverses Rule To Allow Minors To Seek Abortions Without Parental Approval

Young pregnant woman sitting on sofa close up
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Chris Tomlinson

Spanish Minister of Equality Irene Montero is finalising the reveal of a rule that will allow minors above the age of 16 to seek abortion procedures without needing the permission of their parents.

Girls aged 16 and 17 will again be allowed to seek abortions without parental approval after they were banned form doing so in 2015. Minister Monterio, who is seeking to return the rules to those enacted by the government in 2010, argued that minor girls should not require parental permission to perform abortions.

“Just as they are responsible for working or for having sex, they are responsible for deciding about their bodies,” Minister Montero stated earlier this week, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports.

“We cannot accept that young women are left out who find it very difficult to tell their parents that they are pregnant and that they want to terminate their pregnancies, especially those who are victims of sexual violence in their family environment,” Montero added.

The move is part of a broader set of reforms to abortion in Spain, and part of the coalition deal between the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and their far-left partners Podemos, of which Minister Montero is a member.

Another aspect of the reforms has been to ban protests outside of abortion clinics across the country which could see people doing as little as “annoying” those at abortion clinics face up to a year in prison for their activities.

Those who are found guilty of harassing abortion clinics may also be subject to a ban from the areas around clinics for anywhere from six months to three years under the new rules.

Senator Jacobo Robatto, a member of the Spanish populist party VOX, criticised the new abortion legislation last month stating, “No mother regrets being one, but she does having an abortion,” and added, “Women do not want to abort, but to raise their children with dignity.”

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