A week after the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, asked in the Madrid Assembly “that they go and have an abortion elsewhere”, in response to opposition groups that urged her to create a registry of doctors who object to practicing abortion, as required by the latest law on the interruption of pregnancy approved in congress, the Government of Madrid now says that the decision is in the hands of its legal services.
This was announced by the spokesperson councilor, Miguel Ángel García Martín, one day after the regional Executive received a request from the Government to urge it to comply with the law and threatened to go to court. After a week of controversy over Ayuso's words in which the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, was forced to issue a statement in which he endorsed the PP's position in favor of the right to abortion, the Community of Madrid is no longer categorical in its refusal to register objectors. Unlike Ayuso's refusal last Thursday in the Assembly, his Government's spokesperson now leaves that decision in the hands of the legal services and assures that they will respond to the Ministry of Health and Pedro Sánchez himself “when the appropriate procedural moment arrives.”
“The legal services are studying it, when we have something to say about it, we are going to do it. In any case, let's not fool ourselves: this registry is useless. The only thing it intends to do is point out certain doctors. We have said that we are not going to make records or point them out, just as we do not point out women for having an abortion or for not having one, nor do we want to point out doctors for wanting to perform an abortion or for not doing so,” said García Martín. “They have raised an issue that is absolutely outdated. In our country, 106,000 abortions have been performed last year, 20% in our community, any woman who wants to have an abortion under the assumptions included in the law can do so, and they have raised this flag because it was time to talk about this and not about anything else. (…) It is the legal services that are analyzing it, in order to know whether or not there will be that record, we will have to see the conditions that are established in that record and I insist on defending the organizational capacity of a regional government that has powers in health matters. The request occurred yesterday and the legal services are studying it.”
Asked again about the difference between the registry of doctors who object to abortion and the one that already appears in the Community of those who refuse to practice euthanasia, the Government spokesperson avoided answering while insisting that everything is “a smokescreen” not to mention the “weakness of the worst Government of democracy.” But this time the Ayuso Executive has not ruled out that it can be launched.
The abortion controversy has been the most relevant topic at the press conference of the Government Council in which the deputy minister of Universities of the Government of Madrid, Ana Ramírez de Molina, was dismissed, hours after the financial difficulties of the Complutense University became known, to which the regional Executive is going to grant a loan of 34.5 million euros.
The rectors of public universities have been complaining for several years about the underfunding they receive from the Ayuso Executive, which puts their educational quality at risk, while new licenses and greater support are given to private universities. After the Government meeting, the spokesperson councilor pointed out that the departure of the deputy councilor is a normal change in the middle of the legislature and defended that the loan that the Community is going to grant to the Complutense evidences the commitment of his cabinet to public universities. García Martín insisted that the Complutense “must balance its accounts” with an “economic and financial plan.”
After the meeting of its Government, the Community has announced that Ayuso will undertake a five-day trip to Texas (United States) this Thursday with an agenda focused “on visits to large technology companies and the Formula 1 GP in Austin.”