There are areas of Spain where there are no abortions carried out in public medical facilities due to doctors exercising their right to conscientious objection

Spanish Ombudsman Ángel Gabilondo “warned” that in Madrid abortions are not performed in public hospitals, a situation that “should be subject to analysis.” / Credit: Congress of Deputies (Spain)

There are areas of Spain where there are no abortions carried out in public medical facilities due to doctors exercising their right to conscientious objection, according to the country’s Ombudsman, Angel Gabilondo.

The comments made by Gabilondo were revealed in a letter he wrote to Mónica Garca, a left-leaning lawmaker from the Madrid autonomous region, which was leaked to the El Pas newspaper on July 12.

The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party member and former minister of education Gabilondo “warns that in the community of Madrid, voluntary interruptions of pregnancy (i.e., abortions) are not performed in public hospitals,” according to El Pas, whose editorial line supports abortion.

The situation “should be the topic of study and analysis,” according to Gabilondo.

While acknowledging that conscientious objection is a personal choice, Gabilondo believes that its use cannot stop a woman from getting an abortion in a public facility.

After reading the El Pas article, Manuel Martnez-Sellés, president of the Madrid College of Physicians, stated that the ombudsman’s intentions have “surprised” medical professionals.

Martnez-Sellés stated that doctors in the Spanish capital “are surprised by how they intend to force abortions to be performed in some public hospitals” in a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister news agency.

In many public hospitals in the Madrid area, he claimed, abortions are not performed because all of the gynecologists there have unanimously declared their support for the conscientious objector movement.

The “intent to force abortions to be performed in these hospitals if all the gynecologists have declared themselves conscientious objectors” was another issue that Martnez-Sellés criticized.

He asserted that “the only way to achieve this would be either by compelling these professionals to violate their right to conscientious objection or by specifically hiring non-objecting gynecologists, which would be illegal discrimination against objecting gynecologists.”

The ombudsman’s letter is based on the case of a woman who, in 2020, sought an abortion at a public hospital in Madrid because of complicated medical issues, but was directed to a private facility because of the doctors’ conscientious objections.

The actions of the gynecologists who treated the patient and made the decisions regarding the case were not viewed as anything that was sanctionable or inappropriate from an ethical point of view, Martnez-Sellés said in a statement after the case was examined by the college’s ethics commission.

constitutionally guaranteed?

The Constitution’s mandate for the ombudsman is to “defend the fundamental rights and public freedoms of citizens by supervising the activity of public administrations,” the National Association for the Defense of the Right to Conscientious Objection by Biomedical Personnel (ANDOC) emphasized in a statement to ACI Prensa.

The association noted that, in contrast to the right to conscientious objection, which is included in the Spanish Constitution and is “linked closely to freedom of conscience and ideology recognized in Article 16 and that all citizens have, whom it must serve and protect,” abortion “is not a fundamental right; it does not appear in our Magna Carta or in any universally recognized declaration of rights.”

ANDOC continued, “We believe the Ombudsman will also be prepared to listen to the objectors, the healthcare industry as a whole, and to so many women who, due to a lack of resources, are obliged to undergo an abortion.

The association stated, “We want to think that he isn’t acting at (another) party’s request, something completely antithetical to the enormous responsibility that his job involves.

Spain’s abortion rate

Abortion has really been included in the list of public medical services in Spain since 2010 and is recognized as a (non-fundamental) right.

However, since the first abortion law was passed in 1985, the majority of abortions are carried out through the private abortion business, both in Madrid and nationally.

According to Ministry of Health figures, between 84.5 percent and 96.6 percent of abortions were carried out in private facilities annually between 2011 and 2020 alone, the vast majority of them in outpatient clinics.

The statistics are a result of the fact that a large percentage of medical professionals exercising their right to conscientiously object to ending the life of an unborn human being.