The Constitutional Court (TC) has ruled in favor of a woman whom the public health system of Murcia -where she lived- referred to a private center in Madrid to have an abortion, alleging that no doctor in the region had asked to perform this type of intervention, considering that the autonomous community where he lived could only have denied him this service in the face of a “generalized” conscientious objection expressed in advance and in writing.
This is stated in a sentence that was unanimously approved this Monday by the First Chamber of the TC based on a presentation by the president of the guarantee court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, although it has the concurring votes of the conservative wing magistrates Ricardo Enríquez and Concepción Espejel, as reported by the court.
The magistrates have upheld the appeal for amparo filed by the woman because they understand that the Murcian health system, by referring the woman to a private center in Madrid, an autonomous community different from that of her habitual residence, has violated her right to voluntary interruption of the pregnancy, as set out in the recent sentence of the Constitutional Court on the abortion law of 2010.
The judicial decision challenged by the woman considered that the decision of the Murcia Health Service to send the woman to Madrid was justified because no doctor in the region had requested an abortion.
However, the TC explains that such an exemption would only have been possible if all professionals had exercised their right to conscientious objection as established by law, that is, “individually, in advance and in writing”, something that in this case was not accredited.
Thus, the court of guarantees establishes that “the legal provision that guarantees that the interruption of pregnancy must be carried out in the centers of the public health network of the autonomous community itself, except in exceptional cases in which the public health service does not can facilitate it due to a generalized conscientious objection, constitutes a guarantee that it is carried out in accordance with constitutional requirements”.
For the TC, it is about safeguarding “that the woman who is going to terminate the pregnancy, who is in a situation of physical and emotional vulnerability, does not leave her usual environment and can count on the support of her relatives to deal with this difficult situation in the least traumatic way possible.
Consequently, it finds that the public health system of Murcia violated the woman’s right to abortion as there was no exceptional reason to justify that they could not provide the claimed benefit.
