The Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, has attacked the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) for not issuing the mandatory report on the abortion bill that the Council of Ministers approved yesterday and sent to Congress and that reforms existing legislation to, among other issues, shield pregnancy interruptions from being carried out in public health.
In an interview on TVE, Montero pointed out that the CGPJ is aware of the law and perfectly aware of its deadlines, and recalled that the Government “has scrupulously complied with the entire Government law and all procedures” to warn that “who has not done its job, knew its deadlines and has not met them, therefore it has not complied with the law is the CGPJ “.
The minister has abounded in her criticism of the governing body of the judges, whose mandate has expired for almost four years due to the blockade exerted by the PP on its renewal, and has assured that “it would be rare for it to welcome progress in feminist rights” such as the one that, in his opinion, this rule supposes, and he added that the CGPJ “has never done it and has always questioned them”. “It has always tried to put obstacles to the advancement of feminist rights,” Montero has settled, who has reiterated that the body “has not complied with the organic law of the Judiciary that establishes very clearly the deadlines.”
The head of Equality, the ministry co-responsible for the text together with that of Health, has justified the urgency to send the text to the Cortes, without the report of the Judiciary, in which “there are many women who cannot effectively access their right to interrupt the pregnancy and must travel hundreds of kilometers” to do so, which is why the Government considers it “more urgent than ever” to side with women to guarantee their rights, which, in its opinion, are “the first to be called into question when times are tough.”
In any case, Montero has acknowledged that if the CGPJ “finally decides to do its job” its report will be incorporated into the abortion law processing file. “And if you have any constructive criticism, it can be incorporated into the processing file,” he added.
The Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, made a similar statement in an interview granted to EFE in which she explained that there was a “political objective” to start the parliamentary process “as soon as possible”, but that as soon as the report from the CGPJ will be sent to the Cortes so that the groups take it into account.
Montero has also referred to the fact that the text assumes the age of 16 to interrupt pregnancy without parental authorization, one of the most controversial points of the Government project. The minister recalled that the patient autonomy law sets the age for making medical decisions autonomously at 16 years of age and has assured that what the text does is “assume for the interruption of pregnancy the same as for other medical intervention “.
