Vox and the defense of the right to life against abortion: a review of the facts

As I have said on more than one occasion, although I have been a Vox voter since its inception, I have never been affiliated with that party.

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That is why I have preferred not to comment on the recent resignation of Juan García-Gallardo. For that reason, and because with such serious things happening in Spain, I did not feel like wasting time on internal disputes. If I am writing about this now, it is because of an issue related to one of the basic principles of this blog: the defense of life.

This Wednesday, in an interview with Cadena COPE, Juan García-Gallardo stated that after achieving a "political pact for the right to life", the party removed him from direct negotiations, a decision that he commented on by stating that "the party leadership did not care much about principles." I do not intend here to decide who is right, because it is the word of one against the other. So I will limit myself to reviewing the facts that are in the public domain.

The political pact that García-Gallardo is referring to was The pro-life initiative announced on January 12, 2023, which included a fetal heartbeat protocol, based on making it easier for parents to hear the heartbeat of their unborn child. It is a measure that I applauded here two years ago. Some people have interpreted García-Gallardo's statement as meaning that Vox forced him to discard that plan. However, a month later, Vox registered the same fetal heartbeat measurement in the Congress of Deputies, in an initiative that demanded the immediate repeal of the abortion law and that instead it be promoted "its replacement by norms and policies that protect pregnant women and the unborn child from the drama of abortion, guaranteeing information and support to mothers".

If Vox had renounced its principles in defense of life in January 2023 in relation to that pro-life measure, as García-Gallardo seems to suggest in that interview on COPE, what sense would it make for Vox to present that same measure in the Congress of Deputies a month later? Supposedly Vox stopped being pro-life in January 2023 and became so again a month later?

A few months later, on June 25, 2023, the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, referred to this issue in an interview in the newspaper El Debate: "Abortion is one of the worst dramas that any society can face, and we are obliged to do everything possible to protect the weakest." Finally, in the general elections of July 2023, Vox presented an electoral program that included the fetal heartbeat protocol in its point 361:

"We will eliminate the false “right to abortion” and defend the right of every pregnant woman to have access to a permanent information protocol in which health professionals make available to her all the help for the maintenance, education and care of her children.

The protocol will include the possibility of access by the pregnant mother to specific psychosocial care through access to a clinical psychologist; as well as the possibility of listening to the fetal heartbeat and performing a 4D ultrasound."

In addition to this point, Vox's electoral program included these other measures related to abortion:

113. We will approve health legislation that respects the right to life and to physical and moral integrity. This will include a Law on Palliative Care that ensures the care of people in the critical and terminal phases of life, laws supporting birth and the family, as well as the repeal of euthanasia and abortion laws.

114. We will include in the portfolio of services benefits related to oral and ophthalmological health. Similarly, we will eliminate from the Public Health System those surgical and hormonal interventions unrelated to health (sex change, abortion, euthanasia, etc.), especially protecting minors from these practices.

117. We will guarantee freedom of conscience for all healthcare personnel, so that they are not forced to act against their conscience in the face of the impositions of the culture of death (abortion or euthanasia) or trans ideology, both in medical and surgical interventions and in the dispensing of life-threatening medications.

360. We will defend the right to life from conception to natural death and we will end the culture of death. To do this, we will begin by repealing the Euthanasia Law and the Free Abortion Law.

362. We will guarantee the necessary information, support and alternatives for all mothers with a problematic and unexpected pregnancy and we will promote national adoption and foster care as an alternative to abortion.

363. We will eliminate public aid to those organizations that promote practices contrary to the promotion of life from conception, or actively induce women to carry them out.

367. We will guarantee the exercise of the right to conscientious objection by medical or administrative personnel who, due to their functions, are related to practices contrary to the right to life. To this end, we will promote a true protocol for conscientious objection so that those affected can object to each surgery and specific case that is presented to them, without their name appearing on any list or register that violates their privacy and convictions.

All this does not fit at all with the idea of ​​a party that has supposedly renounced its principles regarding the defense of life.

As you know, I have been denouncing the crime of abortion and its social acceptance for decades, which is, in my opinion, one of the worst scourges suffered by many democratic countries. I would not vote for Vox if it did not say anything about abortion in its program, as if that issue had nothing to do with it or as if it had given up defending the defense of life. I would not vote for Vox either if it were ambiguous in its defense of life.

Although I have never been a member of Vox, I have spent many years waiting for a party to come along that defends the right to life in this way and that does so, moreover, from democratic approaches that millions of Spaniards can subscribe to. It would be very sad to go back many years in this because of internal battles in the conservative sector. We have a lot at stake right now and today, with all its virtues and defects (just like the rest of us, because nobody is perfect), Vox is the last hope we have left to change things in Spain.

It is good to create associations, foundations, media outlets and even blogs like this one, and many other civil society initiatives, but without a political force that defends our principles in the institutions we will never achieve any important change. So it would be good if we all started to act in such a way that we make this change possible, because there are already too many people working to prevent this change from happening in Spain.

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Photo: Vox Congreso. Santiago Abascal and the other Vox deputies leaving the first day of the investiture session on November 15, 2023.