Image – Shutterstock: Madrid, Spain
Spain’s socialist government is doubling down on its abortion agenda. As we reported last week, prime minister Pedro Sánchez and his leftist coalition want to write abortion into the country’s constitution. Now Sánchez has gone further, demanding that regional governments hand over a “blacklist” of doctors who refuse to perform abortions.
Letters sent to the conservative-led administrations of Asturias, Aragon, Madrid, and the Balearic Islands order them to compile registries of conscientious objectors within three months. If they fail, Sánchez warned, “appropriate legal mechanisms” will be used to force compliance. He insisted that “respecting the conscience of medical professionals must never be an obstacle to women’s healthcare,” making it clear that access to abortion will take precedence over freedom of belief.
The plan has triggered fierce backlash from medical groups and Catholic leaders, who say it threatens fundamental rights. Eva Martín, president of National Association for the Defence of the Right to Conscientious Objection (ANDOC), described the proposed registries as “blacklists to professionally exclude doctors who want to exercise their right.” She added, “Why not make a list of those who want to perform abortions? That would be far more transparent.”
Under new national rules, public clinics must guarantee abortion services, even as abortion rates continue to rise. Spain’s Health Ministry recorded 103,097 abortions in 2023, a 4.8% increase on the previous year and the highest figure since 2011. Since 2023 sixteen-year-olds have been able to access abortion without parental notice too.
Meanwhile, as mentioned last week, Madrid’s city council has passed a measure requiring women seeking care at municipal centres to be informed about post-abortion syndrome. Bishop César García Magán of Toledo praised the decision, warning that abortion “represents an attack on human life in the womb.”
“A mother is aware that there is someone in her womb, not something,” he said. “Abortion is the elimination of a human life, and that cannot be a right.”
SPUC looks on at Spain with concern. The government’s push marks a dangerous shift to a society that sidelines conscience, targets medical professionals, and treats opposition to abortion as something to be tracked and punished, rather than understood.
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