page_title: Fourth-wave feminism in Spain
section_title: Abortion
hierarchical_section_title: Fourth-wave feminism in Spain / Themes / Abortion
caption_attribution_description: English: Protest for pro-choice in Madrid, Spain, September 28, 2012. "Deciding not a crime. Abortion Outside the criminal code."
context_page_description: Fourth-wave feminism in Spain is about digital participation in virtual spaces, encouraging debates and using collective force to enact change. It is about fighting patriarchal systems, denouncing violence against women, and discrimination and inequality faced by women. It is also about creating real and effective equality between women and men. It has several major themes, with the first and most important in a Spanish context being violence against women. Other themes include the abolition of prostitution, the condemnation of pornography, the support of legal abortion, the amplifying of women's voices, insuring mothers and fathers both have access to parental leave, opposition to surrogacy, and wage and economic parity.
  Major influences in this wave include Andrea Dworkin, Chilean feminist Andrea Franulic and works such as How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran, Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, We should all be feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and El diario violeta de Carlota by Gemma Lienas.
context_section_description: The Council of Ministers announced a plan on 14 May 2009 to change Spain's abortion laws, allowing women to have abortions without a stated reason up until 14 weeks, and with the reason of fetal abnormalities or risk of physical or mental health of the mother up to week 22.  The age of majority to make the decision to have an abortion was to be 16, and the law would make clear that no woman could be sent to prison for having an abortion.  This was approved by the Plenary Congress on 17 December 2009 by a vote of 184 in favor and 158 opposed.  It was then passed by the Spanish Senate on 24 February 2010, with 132 voting in favor, 126 voting against and 1 person abstaining. Following feminists success in modifying Spain's abortion laws in 2010, they were again met by a wall of patriarchal anger.
  In 2012, Spanish feminists celebrated for the first time the Global Day of Action for Access to Legal and Safe Abortion.  The day had been created in Latin America during the 1990s. The demonstration took place against a backdrop of an expected announcement by Partido Popular Minister of Justice Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón announcing plans to introduce new, restrictive abortion measures that would set abortion legality back to a state prior to its legalization in 1985.  Protests took place in Barcelona and Madrid.  The Madrid demonstration was organized by Commission of Feminisms of 15-M, lasted two hours and involved marching from Puerta de Toledo to the Puerta del Sol.  Event spokesperson Luisi Acevedo said of the event, "To the political and economic context that they have created, the Government also adds the ideological question that responds to the interests of ultraconservative parties and movements . They want to put us back in the role of the woman in charge, but we want to tell them that we are subjects with the capacity to decide about our life. [...] Abortion is not a crime, it is a right and it has to be outside the Criminal Code and within the public health network."
caption: Protest for pro-choice in Madrid, Spain, 28 September 2012. "Deciding not a crime. Abortion Outside the criminal code."
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