Valladolid, Jan 19 (EFE).- The spokesman for the Junta de Castilla y León, Carlos Fernández Carriedo (PP), has stated this Thursday, after the controversy surrounding the measures to prevent abortions presented a week ago by the vice president, Juan García-Gallardo (Vox), that “the protocols” currently in force in the Community will not be modified, referring to the general care for pregnant women and abortion.
In the press conference after the Governing Council in which the Board rejected the request for powers sent by the central government on this matter, the spokesperson answered dozens of questions in this regard, with references to the statement from the Ministry of Health of a week ago, which “is still valid”, despite the fact that its content has not yet been transferred to health professionals, as he has recognized.
This contradiction, while defending that they are not going to change the protocols followed by health workers to care for pregnant women -whether they want to abort or not- and the validity of the statement detailing the measures, has been around a good part of the appearance of the spokesman, with a message that the intention of the Board was not to modify the abortion protocol, but to “improve” the benefits for all pregnant women.
He refers to the preference that, if the measures enter into force, the public health of Castilla y León will give to the psychological care of pregnant women, the elaboration of a “protocol” of fetal heartbeat in the first trimester of pregnancy -which he has criticized the Spanish Society of Gynecology- and the performance of a 4D ultrasound, all with the “clinical judgment” of the doctor, but at the same time with the possibility that pregnant women may request it.
fetal heartbeat
The spokesman for the Board has insisted, in the sense expressed by the president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco (PP), that health professionals are not going to be forced to carry out these measures, but that the doctors themselves “know that they are benefits and resources available to them”, although it has not clarified how these “improvements” will finally be communicated to doctors, midwives and gynecologists, as the main stakeholders in the process.
Asked if the doctors who voluntarily offer a pregnant woman to listen to the fetal heartbeat in the first trimester of pregnancy would be exercising “coercion” on them, the spokesman for the Board said: “I am not a judge”, to which He added that both health professionals and women “know what would be coercive and what would not.”
Despite insisting that the content of the statement signed by Health is still valid, it has recognized that the inclusion of the word “protocol” in the point referring to the fetal heartbeat in the first trimester of pregnancy could be a mistake, since it believes that it would fit plus a term such as “procedure”, to distinguish it from the current protocols, without variation, as he has remarked at different times during the press conference.
The future of the Government
Asked on several occasions about what the vice president said at the press conference last Thursday and in the days that followed, Carriedo has hidden behind the fact that he preferred not to analyze what was said by other members of the Government and has summarized: «We share the press release and the agreement of inadmissibility of the Government’s request.
However, when asking for clarification of the reasons why, as a representative of the PP, he did not correct the vice president in the previous appearance they shared, Carriedo has assumed that “things can always be done better” and that he is trying to “learn », for which reason it has announced that it will take it into account for the future.
On the future of the coalition government between the PP and Vox, the spokesman has maintained that its “unity” and “utility” are maintained, although consulted about a hypothetical electoral advance, he has pulled from the political manual to ensure that this decision «corresponds only to the president of the Board».
However, he has defended that whatever his decision, Mañueco’s will be guided “by the criterion of general interest” and by what is “most useful”, without going into analyzing the manifestations made by the different political parties or “individual positions » of each formation.EFE
