On the year 2012, Alberto Gallardón, the Minister for Justice for Mariano Rajoy, the President of Spain, proposed to change the abortion law in Spain.
Before I can continue talking about this, I should give a quick primer on the history of abortion legislation in Spain. From 1822 to 1937, abortion was illegal in Spain. Then, during the Second Republic, it was legalised for less than a year by the Republican Government. Once the fascist dictatorship of Franco took power, abortion was illegalised completely. In 1985, 10 years after the death of Franco, a law was passed that a pregnant person could have an abortion under one or more of three conditions: if the pregnancy was a result of rape, if the foetus showed evident signs of malformation or if continuing with the pregnancy presented grave danger for the physical or psychological health of the mother. This law was similar to the law in the UK, and many women were able to abort by obtaining confirmation that having a baby would negatively impact their psychological health.
In the year 2010, the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero legalised abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, independently of any 'cases'.
Establishing this history is important to understand why Gallardón, the Minister for Justice of a government controlled by the Partido Popular (PP, the Popular Party) wanted to change the law. He wanted to go back to a law of cases, and not even a law equivalent to that of 1985, but an even more restrictive law that would only allow abortions if the woman had been raped or if the pregnancy could be a grave danger to the live of the woman or to her psychological health. This meant that if the foetus had grave malformations, the only way to have an abortion would be to claim that having a baby with those grave malformations would cause severe psychological damage to the mother.
This law was never approved, and currently women in Spain are free to have abortions for any reason whatsoever up to teh 14th week of the pregnancy. However, the proposal of this law led to an important discussion about morality and rights, about discrimination and about how we discuss these matters, particularly in the public arena.
The discussion was centred around people with Down's Syndrome, possibly because this was the most visible group affected, and it was regarding the case of abortion when the foetus has a severe malformation.
According to the 1985 law, if the amniocentecis test showed that the foetus had a trisomy in chromosome 21, the genetic mutation that leads to Down's Syndrome, a woman could abort that baby under the case of gross malformation. The project for law proposed by Gallardón removed this case, arguing that people with Down's Syndrome (and with many other innate conditions that are not life threatening) also had the right to live, that they could live full lives, that families who had children with Down's Syndrome loved these children (this argument is ridiculous of course, how could they not love them?), and therefore, the case of gross malformation should be eliminated.
Of course, we could say that there are different cases of gross malformation. There are cases where it is almost certain the child won't live, and even if they do they will be in a lot of pain (cases of anencephaly come to mind), and there are cases of small physical deformities which may not even hinder the person bearing them. A law could perhaps be written treating each of these cases, or it could be left up to doctors to decide, but this is not the purpose of this text.
The purspose of this text is to discuss when a 'condition' no longer becomes a 'condition', and it just becomes the way someone is. I want to discuss how we think of illness (especially innate illness) and disability, and when these words lose meaning for the people we insist should bear them.
Let me explain. A few months ago I was working at the Node, a website for developmental biologists, and I came across Diana Bianchi, a researcher into early testing for Down's Syndrome and cures for the disease. You can read the profile I found about her here. In the profile, the story of Jerome Lejeune is mentioned. He is the man who discovered that a trisomy in chromosome 21 was responsible for Down's Syndrome, but he regretted his discovery when he found out that it would lead to prenatal testing and abortions. Diana Bianchi has continued to do research into prenatal testing, and has been severely criticised by people with Down's Syndrome and their families: more prenatal testing will mean more abortions of people with Down's Syndrome. But Biancha is also looking for cures, for treatment of Down's Syndrome in utero.
And here is where the question really lies. Should we treat Down's Syndrome? It is not a trivial question. For someone healthy, like me, it seems that the obvious answer is yes, and perhaps this answer would be the same for a lot of people who have suffered because of Down's Syndrome. But what about all those people with Down's Syndrome or who have a relative or a friend with Down's Syndrome who wouldn't change it for the world? Do we have a right to treat these babies before they can even choose to be treated?
It all comes down to whether every condition needs a cure. Whether we all need to be the same. What we call healthy, what we call unhealthy. Whether we all have the right to decide over our own bodies or not.
I'm not claiming to have an answer for these questions. I believe that if I got pregnant with a child that was not going to be 'normal' (whatever that means), and I was offered treatment, I would probably take it, and that if there was no treatment I might well have an abortion. But I should accept that that decision is discriminatory, that it does not take into account the will of the future person, and that it is not an easy moral ground to navigate. I need to accept that in deciding that a person is not 'normal' I am setting lines, us and them, and these lines are not insignificant and that they can be dangerous. And we need to talk about it. There needs to be open dialogue about these matters because not everything is black or white and sometimes decisions are hard to navigate.
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